Vera
by laras-dice
Summary: The return of a former lover changes Vaughn's perspective.
1. 0x0: A Change in Priorities

**Title: **Vera  
**Author: **Laras_Dice  
**E-mail:** laras_dice@yahoo.com  
**Website URL:** http://www.geocities.com/laras_dice  
**Feedback:** Absolutely. Feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome.  
**Distribution:** CD always, otherwise please let me know.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing and love Alias. So don't sue me! Alias is owned by ABC and was created by JJ Abrams and Bad Robot, not Lara. Sigh.  
**Summary:** The return of a former lover changes Vaughn's perspective.  
**Rating:** Most chapters R, one NC-17. I will warn you when I get there.  
**Classification:** Drama/Angst/Action  
**Author's Notes:** These are general notes. More specific chapter-based notes and other miscellaneous stuff can be found at the end of the fic, and that file will be updated as the chapters are. Vera means "trust" in Russian. The story takes place after the events of ATY, in a pretty alternate summer universe. Massive huge thanks to Thorne, for talking me off the ledge time and time again, the occasional much-needed smacking, and for her Russian consultant and mad beta skills. Thanks also to Robin for her wonderful beta. A big shout out to the AIM gang: Celli, Diana, Jenai, Jess, and everyone else who's helped me out through this monster. This would not have been written without all of your support and encouragement, so thanks. :-)

[— Prologue —]

A Shift in Priorities

"SD-6 discourages fraternization among agents."

"So does the CIA."

———

It was called "Red Balloon" by the few that knew the name.

There is a slight possibility that whoever named the project had a sick sense of humor. It began in 1987, three years after the German band Nena had a hit with the nuclear protest song, "99 Luftballoons (99 Red Balloons)." It is more likely that the name is a coincidence, conjured by a scientist with no time for — or access to — Western pop music.

In the days of the Soviet Union, the name did not grace American ears. Occasionally, a rare intelligence report would float the possibility that the Russians were working on a weapon of mass destruction, something that would make the atom bomb look like the puny kid that always got picked last for kickball. The sources of the reports never lived long beyond that.

The Central Intelligence Agency learned of the name when the Soviet Union splintered, spilling secrets from its cracks, to reveal a more vulnerable Russia. The feared KGB became the FSB — not so feared, not so impenetrable.

They emerged shortly after capitalism took root, willing to talk for the right kind of compensation. Agents who got the new Russian economy and — unlike the rest of their countrymen — had something valuable to sell. By their accounts, Red Balloon was nothing more than a glorified nuclear bomb, something to be feared, but nothing to upset that age-old equation that factored down to MAD.

MAD was Mutual Assured Destruction. It was about overkill — two countries with enough nuclear weapons to reduce each other to radioactive dust. MAD was the foundation of the Cold War, and it made it unwinnable.

It also kept it from escalating.

———

Dimitry knew nothing about Red Balloon, and he had never heard the song. They paid him to pace along a barbed wire fence with a rifle slung over his shoulder every day, and he considered himself lucky for that, given the state of his country. This was his second year in the Russian army, and he had learned during his first that you were rewarded for doing what you were told and not asking any questions.

Inside the barbed wire fence was a small concrete bunker. Once white, it had chipped and chunked away under the duress of Siberian winters until it was a steel gray, pocked with remnants of its original color. There was some sort of underground structure below the bunker, Dimitry knew, because once a month a large group of men came here — too many to fit comfortably in the tiny mottled lump, but somehow they always did.

It was not that time of month — that had been last week — and today for Dimitry was to be just another day of pacing the fence. His shift started at six in the morning, an hour before the regular crew arrived — a team of four, three wearing thick-lensed, dark-framed glasses, all crammed into a jeep.

He longed for new boots. They had run out of his size in the last shipment, shoved a smaller pair in his arms and let the mass of of other soldiers push him along the line, toward the socks. The leather had stretched somewhat, but his toes still protested, every step sore.

There were four like him, each covering one side of a large square fence, brandishing rifles they had not fired in months, aging equipment they cleaned when they weren't too exhausted. Twelve hours on — pace, pace, pace — twelve off. They stopped for food twice during the day, at precise times, and ate under the cover of a cluster of pine trees. One always stayed on guard, rifle ready, but their orders were strict: stay beneath the trees unless there was an eminent threat.

Around seven, the crew passed him, forcing clouds of dust from the dirt road that ran along his fence. As usual, they did not acknowledge his presence. The fence gate jingled open and they followed the road over a small hill, parking in another cluster of trees. These provided protection from the satellites that had never crossed Dimitry's mind.

He continued pacing until the shots rang out. Two guards, on either side of the bunker doors, guns pointed at the jeep, spouting yellow starbursts until there were four bodies on the ground. Dimitry shifted the rifle on his shoulder, readied it, commanded his trigger finger to stop shaking, and contemplated his next move.

He was supposed to pace the fence, not make split-second decisions on who the enemy was. The guards had looked no different than usual, standing black-clad on either side of the bunker's door in their futile attempt to surreptitiously guard the place. But the team in the jeep drove past him every day. Every day, the same four men, now all dead.

Dimitry was probably dead now, too, unless he started running. His feet were too sore for that, and they had instilled some sense of responsibility — pride of country, perhaps — in him during his first year. Instead, he aimed his rifle at the guards. His aim was off, and they were too far away, over the hill and protected by the pines. Beyond the fence gate that had locked behind the jeep.

He was supposed to pace the fence. This was not supposed to happen.

———

World history in the twentieth century boils down to counting the mushroom clouds. On August 16, 1945, the United States dropped a bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. A mushroom cloud from that. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. Another mushroom cloud.

After the first mushroom cloud, it became the express purpose of the Office of Strategic Services, and then its predecessor — the Central Intelligence Agency — to see how far away the second was. After the second, it became the understated purpose of the CIA to keep a mushroom cloud from appearing over American soil. It was the underlying threat. It was _Why They Were There_, as agents were told during training.

Nobody at the CIA was sure if Red Balloon would make a mushroom cloud.

Word came first through back channels. A site in Siberia they had considered hot for years. Nothing visible during the satellite passes — the Russians were still too good for that — but too many tire tracks in the dirt road leading to the old bunker for it to merely be an old bunker.

One of their operatives in Russia reported that the site was under fire, confirmed later by satellite. A few in Analysis raised the possibility that this was a research site.

This was confirmed later, diplomatically. The Russians would not identify the exact nature of the research, and didn't have any conjectures as to who had infiltrated it. Said nuclear material was missing, and left it at that.

Someone in Analysis mentioned Red Balloon.

Everyone panicked, regardless.

———

No country would dare nuke America. You don't mess with MAD, shake the equation out of balance.

No country would fly planes into American skyscrapers. MAD assumes traditional warfare. MAD assumes rationality. MAD assumes there is another country to mutually destroy.

People had flown planes into skyscrapers. Set new precedents, changed the rules. MAD was brushed aside like old friends when a new lover comes into the picture.

There were priorities, and then there were _Priorities_. This was the latter. Things got shifted down the ladder quickly.

Milo Rambaldi? Reclassified as centuries-old bullshit.

SD-6? Moved to a skeleton crew.

They were not priorities. They were not _Why They Were There_.

———

This is how what was once a powerhouse becomes strangely irrelevant.

There are 12 members in the Alliance of Twelve again. The newest is Arvin Sloane. Since the death of his wife, he is even more quiet, determined. His eyes have become cold prisms, focusing the whole of his organization on one project: Milo Rambaldi.

SD-6 learned of the Circumference two weeks after the CIA reclassified it and filed it away. Three weeks after the CIA nearly lost two agents (and SD-6, unwittingly, one) to the Rambaldi project that once was the finish line in a global intelligence race.

Most of the runners have now dropped out.

[— End Prologue —]


	2. 1x1: Postcards and Paper Bags

[— Part I —]

Chapter 1.1 — Postcards and Paper Bags

_Tuesday, July 16, 2002_

He hates this place. Too clean, too new, too white. It is Tuesday, so they have cleaned his floor the night before. It smells like a doctor's office — the antiseptic push of whatever cleanser makes institutional tiles extra-glossy. Here, when you let the paper do what paper, inherently, wants to do — make piles on your desk — people stare.

Like something is wrong with you for working like a normal person.

There are certainly advantages. Weather comes to mind, sunny on a light blue sky, a little too balmy and perfect and L.A., mocking the summer thunderstorms pummeling the rest of the country. Mocking the nuclear winter on everyone's mind, the tension that has steeped through this building like tea in hot water. It has been saturated for two months now.

They gave him a temporary assignment at Langley once. Two months on a floor with threadbare brown carpeting and walls that haven't seen white since men sat within them and debated the things he had read about in history books. Not to mention the things that never make the history books. You have to tiptoe through the scents to find anything good, best to focus on the coffee in your cup, properly burnt for late nights. There, they let you make piles on your desk. Expect it. They get work done there.

They get work done here, too, just without the piles. But today, Eric Weiss will not get any work done. His job is still SD-6, therefore less important, and irrelevant enough for him to be pulled off of analysis to give yet another new agent the grand tour of the place he hates. Yo-yos and practical jokes aside, he takes his job seriously, and his job is on hiatus. _Again._

His office is far from — _well, far from freaking everything_ — but most importantly, at this point, far from the elevator. He starts the long walk down the shiny-floored hallway and wonders briefly why more people don't slip and fall from this shit. They have missed a spot, by the chrome trash cylinder next to the elevator. One dull little circle in the midst of the shine, and somehow this is comforting to him.

———

The warehouse today, and Dixon only.

Marcus Dixon drives a minivan, and it earns him Michael Vaughn's envy. Vaughn considers this as he steps through the doorway of the warehouse, the steel door clapping shut behind him. Somehow, Dixon has succeeded where he and so many of his peers have failed.

Vaughn has known him for little over a month, but he can somehow see Dixon at his kitchen counter, packing lunches. Peanut butter and jelly and juice boxes slid in paper bags, into little hands, kisses on foreheads and off to school with you. A big, fatherly smile as they trot out the door.

You'll never have the white picket fence, Michael.

The only paper bags Vaughn touches are the ones that arrive on his desk every few days. Little balls of brown paper, covered with careful, looping Sydney script — and more recently Dixon's jagged print — uncrumpled on his desktop, pads of fingers smoothing the wrinkles.

Generally, however, Marcus Dixon is not a man to envy. He is not a double agent by choice. A double agent, instead, because Jack Bristow held him at gunpoint two months ago and marched him to the CIA's L.A. headquarters, where they laid out the truth, slow and harsh. Vaughn wasn't around at the time, but he's heard Dixon crumpled like one of those bags.

"Afternoon." The metal fencing chings against itself as he slides it to the side, and he pulls his hand away, frowning at the layer of rust it leaves on his fingers.

Dixon only nods. His eyes are wary with too many trusts snapped and allegiances broken. Vaughn knows Dixon does not trust him, nor should he trust Dixon. From Sydney, he feels he knows the man, but he needs to build his own case, draw his own conclusions. You can't transfer trust.

Vaughn proffers a small black box. "The CIA wants a duplicate copy of whatever you pull off the mainframe. Seat 18-D, just like last time."

Dixon nods again, and stares at him. Analysis, perhaps, by a man who has needed to reanalyze his entire world in the last few months.

"Um, how is Sydney?" He had promised himself that he would not ask. But there it is, leaving his mouth.

"She's fine." At least it helps him draw words. "She had to work on a paper."

Vaughn has not seen his other agent in — it takes him a moment to do the math, and he is a bit proud of this — a little over a week. That was when she stared at the swirls of sawdust on the floor and asked quietly if he would please call her at Will Tippin's residence now.

———

Despite the cane, she can keep a pretty decent pace.

She is Christine Watkins, Weiss's charge for the day, and a very pleasant surprise. Pale blue eyes, startling enough that you notice them first and stay stuck there for awhile. Long and lean — _wicked_, he thinks — in a black pantsuit. Dark brown hair, twisted into a bun that should seem severe, but translates somehow into stunning instead.

Surprising enough that he — too busy ogling — tried to shake her hand when the elevator doors opened, not noticing until too late the metal tube flowing from her left hand and the file folder in her right. She laughed it off: "Sorry. Doc says maybe I can ditch this thing by the end of the week."

They are walking through the slick hallways now, but she is steady, the cane clicking as it hits the floor, rhythmic with her steps: tap-tap-click, tap-tap-click. She has been personable, pleasant, and he thinks _maybe_ he should ask if she has plans for dinner. But there is a distance to her; steady observance, wariness, as if she feels the need to soak things from the environment that are outside his sphere of perception.

This, he has learned, is because she is not the green agent he had anticipated. Instead, she comes off seven years in Russia, ended with a bullet that now necessitates the cane.

"So were you ever in the L.A. office before?" More small talk; he will bide his time and try to get a better read.

"I spent about a year here before I went into the field, but that was in the old building." He would have liked the old building, he decides. _Especially with her in it._

Tap-tap-click, and they reach the end of the hallway. "Did you want to see the op-tech room now?"

She looks almost embarrassed, and runs a faint smile across perfect lips, eyes trailing down to her cane hand. "Actually, if you don't mind, could we take a little breather?"

Right. Faux pas number two. But he has not noticed any change in her carriage or facial expressions. _Note to self: This is why they discourage inter-office dating. Because hitting on a spy is just damn hard._

"Yeah-sure-sorry." He runs them together and it feels like high school again. "My office is just around the corner."

They turn the corner, and he attempts chivalry by holding the door open — surely a lost cause by now. She sinks slowly into the fabric of the chair in front of his desk, then sets to absorbing the room. He has left the yo-yo sitting on top of his desk, and curses himself for it, but she does not linger there. Eyes sweeping, soaking, and then she props the cane up against the desk and swings the chair around to face the door. To face the threat, he realizes.

"Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes, please." She focuses on the activity behind him. "Black."

He turns to fetch the coffee and decides it is time to give up. _Christine Watkins is a hard one to read._

———

It is somewhat of a wonder that Michael Vaughn still has a job. He has been by-the-book since the mess in Taipei, but really should have been fired for said mess. That he was not is more a testament to the CIA's current need for manpower than his service record.

There is something to be said for getting lost in the shuffle.

It is also somewhat of a wonder that Michael Vaughn is still alive. He owes this to the fortuitous air duct that gave him oxygen and then an escape route. From there came a desperate search — fruitful, after five minute of dripping through the Taipei night — to find a pay phone. A call to one of many numbers he keeps burned in his brain, a harsh warning about unsecured lines, and finally acquiescence. They would send a team.

And they did, extracting Sydney five hours later. Irina Derevko was nowhere to be found.

He tries not to focus on that as he pounds down the stairs to the lower levels of the CIA's L.A. headquarters. This trip is about peacemaking for events before Taipei. Gathering the scattered pieces of a friendship and seeing if maybe some couldn't be stuck back together again.

The stairs are the fastest way to reach Weiss's office. They allow him to avoid the unfortunate maze of hallways, and besides, he woke with too much of a headache to run today.

This is a poor substitute, but at least it is something.

The same as his proposed peace offering — "want to hit the bar tonight?" — simple but still rolled over in his mind many times for practice, tested and worn smooth like river rocks. Something, at least.

Something instead of the nothing of late.

He reaches the landing on the proper floor, opens the white-painted door and steps into the bustle. Everything is frantic now, but it is a delirious game of hurry-up-and-wait; the worry is plentiful and the intelligence thin. He is glad "the nuke," the unofficial nickname of the cause of all this, is not in his domain, but the worry is there nonetheless. It is for everyone who knows.

There are cubicles on one side, offices another, and a long narrow pass to cross. A secretary nearly runs into him, a pad of fluorescent pink "While you were out" notes leading her way. He dodges her and continues on his way; the route is automatic, traveled many times, although not recently.

This is the unpredictability of life. Every day, countless people crash into the unforeseen. There are car accidents, heart attacks, convenience store robberies. Unexpected promotions. Unexpected firings. Some are surprised by other people. Unexpected compliments, insults. Shifts in personality. New people. Old people.

So it is for Michael Vaughn when he turns a familiar corner and walks into a ghost.

———

There is a pause — one minute, five minutes, he does not know — and only staring.

Staring and observing.

Her eyes are still the same strange blue. But now they are edged with faint lines. More tortured. Wiser, perhaps. Her hair, dark brown — almost black — without the sun streaks that eased its depth when he knew her. The bun should seem stern, austere at least. Instead, it only serves to show off the angles of her face, drawing on sharp cheekbones and those eyes to pull it all off.

Beige lipstick on _those_ old curves. Pale, traditional. Before, wine-colored, a few shades too dark and bold to fit in here. Her skirts, too, always existed a few inches too short of protocol. Pants today. Traditional, classy, and the air of wildness that surrounded her — red lips and short skirts and impetuous eyes — is absent.

The attitude is not, when she finally destroys the silence.

"Don't look at me like that, Michael. If it was up to me, I'd still be in Moscow and I'd still have a fucking spleen."

Many years ago, they played darts this way. Launch words as weapons, then duck for the rebuttal. He is still too speechless for a counterstrike, too shocked to duck.

He manages only one word, and it is hardly more than a whispered acknowledgement of recognition. "Chris."_ Seven years._ Then, he would have had more to say.

Or yell.

There is something else. Something his initial observation has missed. Something off in her posture. He does not catch it until she stands, left hand sliding behind her to pull out the cane.

There is a moment where his anger dissipates, replaced with brief, stinging ache. Her movements are stiff, slow, and his eyes set anchor on the cane, but catch something like a grimace in the periphery. His features soften, and a little pain creeps in. This is not something to be felt, and Vaughn pushes it out of the way.

"This was not my choice." Calm, level, but the undertones are bitter.

The cane flicks forward as she starts to leave, and Weiss picks this moment to walk in, a ribbed Styrofoam coffee cup in each hand.

A pause, a moment of observation.

"I take it you two have already met."

———

Seven years ago, there was a postcard. The generic gift shop variety — palm trees and sunshine for the forgetful at LAX. Three words, scrawled on the back.

Fuck you, Michael.

She might have even addressed it, if the flight had been delayed a little longer. If her tears hadn't made the ink run.

It went into the trash instead of the mail.


	3. 1x2: Habit

Chapter 1.2 — Habit

The words are on Vaughn's mind again. Old words — and it hurts, makes him feel strange and horrid — that they came out of his mouth. Words buried deep in his subconscious, burrowed down until he no longer felt the guilt of them.

And then she comes back, ice eyes like a pickax at his head. Reaches in, roots around, silently tosses them back in his face.

Unearthed, they echo now as she tap-tap-clicks out of Weiss's office. He watches her leave, then turns to Weiss, still standing next to the doorway, a cup of coffee steaming from each hand.

When Vaughn finally speaks, he is unable to mask the desperate need to know. "Wha...what the hell happened to her?"

This is a strange and delicate dance, and they are not any good at it, although they have been doing it for some time now. Weiss sets the coffee down on his desk and strides behind it, the leather chair hissing as he sits. One hand darts out to grab the yo-yo lying next to a tall stack of files; it disappears into one of the desk's drawers, and then he gestures to the coffee. _Want some? I don't think she'll be coming back for it._

Vaughn shakes his head and his eyes press. _Don't mince this. You fucking owe me._

"She was on assignment in Russia." He nods, impatient; knows this already. "Somebody compromised the op, and she got caught in the crossfire. Apparently she's lucky she can still walk. How do you know her?"

Slack on the details. Well fine. "We went through agent training together." _Hypocrite._

Weiss knows there is more, and he isn't allowed to ask for it. Not yet. And there is still the bombshell. "She's been assigned to the SD-6 case."

"What?" The word shoots out, vaguely venomous, and he grows more flustered. "That doesn't make any sense. Her background was Russian and computer science. They should have her all over the nuke."

"She probably hasn't been cleared yet. If she just spent seven years over there, I don't think anyone's going to authorize her working on their missing nuke right away."

A pause for digestion, and Vaughn wishes he was not so adamant in his last memo to Bill Devlin about the need for more agents on the SD-6 case._ You get what you ask for, not what you want. _He runs through potential complications and it takes a moment to realize that Weiss has spoken.

Something about grabbing a drink later. They have done a decent job of tiptoeing through this, but there are holes in the story, and Vaughn feels the need to fill them.

So much easier to sink into old habit. So much easier to forgive, to ignore. It is why he came here in the first place. "Sure."

———

There are three conference rooms in the CIA's Los Angeles headquarters. The first two are large, spacious affairs, massive wooden tables draped with plastic teleconferencing triangles — secure lines, of course — and rivers of wires that snake down the legs. The Central Intelligence Agency seal, a large circle on the wall above the head of each table, sets them apart from their counterparts at traditional businesses.

The third is located in what used to be two separate offices, the wall between them removed to make a small room. The walls are stark white and windowless, the table clean and new, but bare. The room is tiny, but you can cram ten people in if the other two are booked. The SD-6 team fits comfortably, and this has become their meeting place of late.

Vaughn is the first to arrive. He slaps a legal pad and pen down on the far side of the table and walks around to join them. The chairs are molded plastic, the tabletop cool laminate, and he longs to rest his head on it, just for a few moments. He does not; the rest of the team will be here shortly — including _her_ — and he cannot afford to get caught trying to draw out the storm in his head. Instead he sits quietly and draws stars on the legal pad, making futile attempts to erase old words from his mind.

There are nine little ballpoint stars by the time Alex McClure walks in. Six months out of training and a bit wild, McClure has made it clear that he would rather be a field agent. But his ideas are solid, and he stays level so long as you don't rouse the Irish temper that lurks beneath the rusty hair and freckles.

Jack Bristow and Jim Kretchmer walk in together. As Jack's handler, Kretchmer — tall, graying rapidly, with small wire-rimmed ovals balanced on his nose — has always held Vaughn's respect. More so now, since he has heard Bristow's tape-recorded interrogation of Steven Haladki. The tape cuts off before the end, but his imagination has filled the gap effectively.

Kretchmer, along with Bristow — when he's in the building — have become the de facto leaders of the team since Devlin stopped attending their meetings, and most of their agents were reassigned. The SD-6 team is one of several at the CIA that have been stripped down to the bare minimum, devoted to the formerly important. Kretchmer takes the head of the table, Bristow a seat beside him. Weiss, right behind them and typically almost-late, sits quickly. This leaves Watkins in the doorway, leaning on the cane, and even Kretchmer and Bristow seem startled.

Christine Watkins is more world-weary, wiser, perhaps, than she was seven years ago. But the old, indescribable magnetism is still there. Features attractive, but unspecific, so that once she left the room you would remember something about blue eyes and little else. An appearance well-suited to what she did.

Vaughn knows this already, so he scrutinizes as Kretchmer introduces her. Most shocking are the flats on her feet, basic black and scuffed around the toes. A temporary thing, then, until she is stable enough to get back to the heels that jack her up to a more preferable height. He wonders how much of the rest of her is a temporary thing.

———

As operations go, it is simple. SD-6 is after a Rambaldi manuscript that details the Circumference. Arvin Sloane believes Alexander Khasinau, aka "The Man," has this manuscript. This is only partially true.

The full truth is that Irina Derevko, aka Laura Bristow, aka "The Man," has one copy of this manuscript, and the CIA has another. They want both, and will let SD-6 track down the other for them.

The mission is part of the tracking process. Sydney and Dixon are set to execute an in-and-out data grab from one of Derevko's front companies. The company's mainframe, Sloane believes, contains the location of the manuscript.

Vaughn knows the mission already — prepared the brief — but he lets Jack Bristow spell it out for the rest of the team. These things take on a particular cadence: SD-6 mission, CIA countermission, discussion and thanks for coming.

Watkins breaks the cadence. "I'm sorry. Did you say the mainframe was a model PV-E?"

Bristow stares at her, and she gives him the ice eyes back. "Yes."

"That's wrong. They never moved PV-E into production. There's a D, and an F, but no E." She glances about the room like this should be a major revelation, and finds only confusion. "They cut the disk latency time on the F model in half. If it's a D, you won't make the five minute window."

It is almost worth his new lay of complications to see Jack Bristow completely taken aback.

———

They do not meet at the pier any more. The park instead, and outside air a welcome change, cooling slightly in anticipation of night.

A little blond-haired girl has lost control of her balloon, and Vaughn does not miss the irony. She is crying, face blotchy red and snotty, about 20 feet away. "We'll get you another," promises a petite blond woman, patting at the blotchy face with a wrinkled tissue. Her mother, he assumes.

You'll never have the white picket fence, Michael.

He turns his attention to the balloon, watches it grow smaller against the faded pastel remnants of the sunset. The speck has disappeared by the time she arrives.

"Do you mind if I have a seat?" Crisp, polite. A stranger's voice.

"No. Go right ahead." He slides his eyes sideways, one quick glance. She looks faded, muted. Tired.

Sydney sits her backpack on the grass in front of the wooden bench, and takes the opposite end with a slight creak. A stranger's distance. Two months ago, she clung to him in a CIA safehouse.

A stranger's distance since.

"We had to revamp your countermission. Bad intel. There's a transmitter underneath the bench, just set it on top of the unit. One of our agents here will search for the files. We'll decide what to give SD-6 once we see what's on there."

"Okay."

The little girl and her mother walk past. The little girl has a new balloon.

"How's Will?" The question has become commonplace, words as locked in their peculiar vernacular as "good luck" and "what's my countermission."

The CIA keeps careful track of certain things, the budgets of American newspapers among them, and when a story on SD-6 was slotted to run, they moved quickly. Court order, clear and present danger, story snuffed, and that was that. No damage done.

Damage was done to Will Tippin. Vaughn has seen the pictures, read the statements, and knew then that post traumatic stress was almost inevitable.

She sighs, slumps her shoulders. "About the same." _Bullshit, Sydney._

She blames herself, he knows, and her subdued guilt march has worsened recently. He suspects Will has as well. She says she moved in with him so he would have someone there who understood his ordeal. He wants to believe her, but he wonders.

He wonders if she comforts him when the nightmares come. If she holds him in the night. If she lets him touch her, fuck her, until they are both tired enough for a dreamless sleep.

He is no longer the only one who knows her secret — special role no longer special. _And you can't share a bed with her. Will can._

There is still something. Something in the way she held him in that safehouse. Something that flits across her eyes occasionally. It tells him he would have a chance if he just fought.

It is time to stop fighting.

Time to leave Sydney to Will Tippin, Irina Derevko, Noah Hicks — all the myriad knives she uses to stab, unwittingly, at him. Time to extract himself from Hurricane Sydney, the fucked-up force of nature, well-meaning but inadvertently destroying everything in her path.

It gives him a reason to change his vantage. It is safer from a stranger's distance.

———

Vaughn would prefer somewhere grittier, but they are getting too old for that. This bar is all polished cherry and brass railing, subdued voices and martinis on every table. He feels a little strange ordering a beer, but Weiss does the same, and there is some sort of strength in numbers. Even if the numbers no longer consider themselves friends.

They sit amidst the other suits, pint glasses clinking on the tiny wooden table. No bottles here. A few times back-and-forth, glass-to-mouth, for both. Eventually, it will loosen the angry knot in Vaughn's stomach. Enough of the familiar motion, and he may forget betrayal.

Weiss picks up a packet of Sweet 'N Low from the plate in the center of the table and twirls it between his fingers a few times. "So...Watkins. You went through agent training together. And?"

Weiss still does not deserve the long version, and it is too painful to tell. The short, instead.

"I hated her the first week. Cocky, but she could back it up." Weiss nods; this part has become obvious. "She was an ace at anything on a computer, knew like every Eastern Bloc language. Sharp mind. Really sharp. One day she just up and asked me out."

"You know, Mike, there are like millions of women in this world you don't work with." Habit, the joke. Weiss knows he's overstepped, and goes back to twirling the little pink packet.

Sip your beer and cool down, Mike. You've been friends for four years. Up until recently, that would have been funny.

The short version gets shorter.

"It took off pretty quick after that. We dated for about a year, and then she was assigned to field duty in Russia."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

No. Not even fucking close.

———

Vaughn has lived in one apartment of the five-apartment flat for the last three years. Pushing thirty years old, with white aluminum siding that hasn't managed the California sun very well, it is filled with others like himself. Single-bedroom affairs for single people who can't afford or don't want any more. On a government salary, he fits into both categories.

The previous tenant in his particular apartment lost a security deposit on the illegally installed dog door and fence in the back. He assured the landlord it was fine, then used the opportunity to get a dog.

This is who greets him when he steps through the front door.

"Hey, Donovan." He rubs the dog's head and drops his mail — three bills and two credit card offers — on the floor. The bulldog is comparatively svelte for his breed, but a little soft from lack of exercise.

The interior is simple, necessities only. The entryway falls into the living room, kitchen and eating area beyond that. A hallway to the right leads to bedroom and bathroom, both sparse.

Tuesday is trash day, and so he walks through the place, collecting. There are more beer bottles in the kitchen can than he remembers drinking. But he has spent more time here in recent weeks than is normal.

He wonders how things grew so empty so fast. Important relationships had chilled, certainly, but there is more than that. What had been fairly frequent social events — hockey league, trips to the bar, beer-pizza-sports gatherings on Saturday afternoons — had all dissipated. Too many agents working too many hours. Too much threat for fun and games.

Vaughn ties the bag shut and thinks — not for the first time — that his life revolves around his job.


	4. 1x3: Reflections

Chapter 1.3 — Reflections

_Wednesday, July 17, 2002_

When Vaughn runs, it is in the morning. Calm all around, and a haze the sun has yet to beat out of the air.

He curses the disruption as a pickup truck rumble-clanks past, American flag flapping from its passenger side window. They have dwindled lately — the flags — that en vogue wave of patriotism fading with them. It's just as well, as far as he's concerned. They only make him feel the need to examine his motivations, make his car look strange as one of the few on the road without one.

Previously, he ran every day. Punish the sidewalk — thump-thump-thump — with his feet, ran until he couldn't breathe and his legs turned to jelly. Only then was he exhausted enough to meet with his agent without broadcasting nervous energy — dropped papers and fingers twirling at his forehead, _get the words out, damn it._

He has scaled back to a few times a week, exhaustion no longer necessary, and this means he breathes harder, disrupts the stillness more. On some days it is still necessary — clears the ache of too much to drink the night before, too many late hours at work, too much wanting of things he cannot have.

Today he runs for all of these reasons, but mostly because he will have to work an operation with Christine Watkins.

———

Calling the op-tech room a "room" is a bit of an understatement. Spanning most of the length of the building on the fifth floor, it meanders — a maze of desks and tables, thick bundles of wires, and temporary office dividers that have become permanent. The lighting is brighter than the rest of the building, illuminating both tools strewn across tables and the piles of computer equipment that have accumulated wherever something makes a corner. The gadgets are everywhere, too, and these give the room a bizarre appearance — cellular telephones, eyeglasses and lipstick tubes scattered amidst the more obvious technology.

Vaughn finds Watkins in a tiny gray square created by some of the dividers, paging through one file of a sizable stack of manila. The computer monitor beside her has gone blank, and he takes a moment to study her reflection.

She looks nothing like her mother, Mila, a small, round Russian immigrant who worked two jobs and lived with her only daughter in an old brick apartment building. Enough sweat and hours to let her daughter earn the grades that got her into MIT.

Mila died — car accident, auto-pedestrian — a year after Watkins left for Russia. Vaughn attended the funeral; she was conspicuously absent.

He has always assumed she looks like her father, although paternity was not a subject broached between them. An unwritten rule, established after each learned the bare facts. His: killed doing his job. Hers: skipped when she was two.

"You going to stand there all day?" Her tone is edgy, but almost friendly. The computer screen is no longer blank, and she is waving the file folder in the air. "I should have just kept my mouth shut. They've had me reviewing intel all morning."

Almost friendly is enough to move a few steps closer. She looks at him full-on, and the fluorescent lights settle into the wrinkles around her eyes. "Look. If we're going to work together, we need to leave the past in the past."

A challenge. _I've grown up, have you?_

Yes.

He nods, wonders if they really can ignore things that have been left painfully unaddressed. "You have everything you need for this afternoon?"

"Getting there. I still need to excavate a Cyrillic keyboard from the mess out there."

"You want me to look for it?"

"Nah. I got it." She turns back to the monitor and it shines off her eyes. Missile software. "See you at one."

Well, fuck. Maybe we can be civil. He almost trips over a knot of wires on the way out.

———

It is midnight in the Western end of Russia and 1 p.m. in Los Angeles when Vaughn enters the tiny operations room. Watkins and a techie whose name he can't recall are already seated, faces illuminated by the 12 video monitors that dominate the wall. Three are blank, two quiver with static, and the rest show that Volgograd will likely see some rain before morning. Satellite imagery will not be of much help today.

In 20 minutes, Sydney Bristow and Marcus Dixon will pose as safety inspectors and enter the Slava Chemical Refinery. Both will go hot mike in 15 — one of the new advantages of partner doubles. For now, they wait.

Watkins has found her keyboard, foreign lines and circles underneath close-cropped nails. She types, smooth but casually slow, glancing up occasionally at an equally foreign display on the monitor in front of her.

"We're good to go, Michael." He claims the seat beside her, careful to keep it equidistant between her and the nameless techie. Still closer than he was to Sydney on the park bench.

This part is routine. Headset on, check the volume. He has spent a lot of time in this room, chatting with Sydney — if you can call it that, with him in the middle of CIA headquarters and her halfway around the world. Eyes up toward the monitors, still mostly clouds.

"Vaughn?" Sydney comes on with a slight crackle in his ear.

"Good evening." Maybe she smiles. He always imagines she does. "Dixon?"

"I'm here." Composed, but strained. The only tone he's ever heard from Dixon.

"Vaughn, we're headed in." Rapid-fire Russian from someone, he assumes at the company's front desk, followed by a short response from Sydney. She can speak serviceable Russian, he knows, but is spread too thin over other languages for depth.

He looks to Watkins for more insight, and she shapes the beige lips through a silent, "they're fine," before turning toward her monitor. The conversation on the other end of the comm link stops, replaced by footsteps that echo down what sounds like a long, concrete-floored hallway.

From here, they will activate a signal jammer to disrupt the building's security cameras, disable their escort, and enter the large room at the end of the hallway. It contains what Watkins calls a "big old warhorse of a mainframe," and they will have five minutes to search it after activating the jammer.

"Go." This from Sydney, and he jabs his thumb at a stopwatch. A short grunt from Dixon, and then the sound of someone _thump-slump_ on the floor. They are in the room 11 seconds later, the CIA's transmitter placed two after that, and then there is nothing for him to do but wait and watch Watkins.

Noise from the keyboard is the easiest way to track her progress. Plastic popping and pounding, click-click-click-clack-click. Her fingers remind him of the legs on a racehorse, galloping through the files. Bones glide beneath the skin, veins blue beneath and swelling. She once told him she can top 100 words a minute; he has never doubted it. Strong hands, and he knows they have talents beyond typing.

"Two minutes." No response, just click-click-clack-click-click-clack-click. Her eyes roll a short back-and-forth over the characters cascading across the screen; blinking, when it comes, is swift, and then she is back to sharp focus. He stands to get a better angle on the screen. Click-clack-click-click-click-click.

"One minute. You close?"

"Yeah. Just — " The next few keystrokes are more final, deeper clacks. "The document is in Khabarovsk, being held by a Lashuk Petrov." Her speech is perfect apple-pie American, until she rolls over the Russian words. Then her accent rattles, staccato, the words fitting her just as well as the English ones did, and he can see her blending perfectly into the Moscow masses.

Thirty seconds to spare. One hand goes to adjust his microphone, and he realizes the other is resting on her shoulder. "We've got it, Syd. Clear out." The renegade hand slides slowly from the warmth of the gray suit jacket. She does not acknowledge its presence or absence.

"Copy that, Vaughn." They begin running down the hallway.

"Sydney, tell SD-6 that the document is in Khabarovsk, held by Lashuk Petrov."

"Is it?"

"Yes."

He can hear gravel skittering beneath her feet now, Dixon running beside her. She is breathing harder. "Why — " Short gasp. "Why are we just handing this over to SD-6?"

"Syd, we're going to have to let SD-6 scout this out. We can't send in a team right now. You know we don't have the manpower."

Her voice lowers and the static crinkles for her next words. Something about "bullshit."

———

Like many people who drink too much coffee and live by themselves, Vaughn has mugs littered throughout his apartment. Like the subset of these people who are otherwise tidy, he is disgusted when he notices them. He notices today, and moves about the sparse apartment, collecting. Five this time, one less than last time, so perhaps he is getting better. Or perhaps he just noticed sooner.

Faucet on, soap suds squirted in, a growing mass of bubbles, and lemon scent wafting up with the steam. Strangely, he finds this comforting. It brings him back to washing dishes with his mother in a much older, homier kitchen with pea green tiles; up on tiptoes to reach into the sink while his mother dried them. Michael and Mom, always together, always waiting for Dad to come home.

And then one day he didn't.

Still, it is calming, the muffled clank as ceramic collides in the warm water. Domestic, almost.

You'll never have the white picket fence, Michael.

Coke can from the fridge, two Excedrin from the cabinet. His head aches from too many nights of too much alcohol.

The Coke sweats in his hand as he slumps into the overstuffed couch, realizes there's still a damned tie around his neck and yanks it off, draping it over the far arm of the couch. Then on to the remote.

ESPN. Wednesday Night Baseball Doubleheader. The announcers are too loud, too enthusiastic, but he doesn't turn the volume down. They will calm eventually, and then the only sound will be pitches popping into gloves, cracking off of bats.

Sports escape. The teams don't matter, and neither does the score.

He finds this refreshing.


	5. 1x4: Overlap

Chapter 1.4 — Overlap

_Thursday, July 18, 2002_

This is the way SD-6 does business.

Until today, Lashuk Petrov was a low-level operative in Irina Derevko's network. Not, by any means, a good man, Petrov was a relative bottom-feeder in the intelligence world, not important enough to merit significant interest from other agencies. His primary tasks consisted of developing false identities, smuggling agents and materials across various borders, and assisting in the occasional assassination of similarly low-level K-Directorate agents.

On this morning, an SD-6 team burst through the door of Petrov's apartment in Khabarovsk. Asked Petrov politely — if you consider pistol-whipping polite — where the Rambaldi document was. Petrov said nothing.

A search of the tiny cinderblock apartment proved futile. The following interrogation was not so polite.

Two hours later, his blood making tiny streams down a wooden chair, over his handcuffs, into rivers on the floor, Petrov broke. He did not have the manuscript, but he knew who did: Nikolai Marusov.

They put a bullet in Petrov's head for his troubles.

———

Bill Devlin is the only person on the other side when the elevator dings and the metallic doors glide open.

"Good morning, Agent Vaughn."

"Morning, sir." Both are well-pressed, fitted and no afternoon wrinkles yet, but bucking the traditional CIA color code: dark suit, white shirt. Devlin does this because he is the boss, needs to stand out. Vaughn does it because he has somehow always felt the need to throw a little grain of sand at protocol — a little blue shirt irritant.

"How is SD-6 going?" It is polite elevator talk more than a need to know; if he had a wife and kids, perhaps Devlin would ask about those. Neither of them have a family, so shop talk is small talk.

"Fine, sir." _Suppose I should thank him for complicating my life._ "We really could still use more agents, but one is better than none."

"I'm doing what I can, Agent Vaughn. And we may have someone else for you." Devlin glances up, checking their progress in the numbered lights above the doors. "We're throwing a lot of people into Libya. Bletcher pulled a good lead out of there yesterday and we're going to try to smoke it out. So things may be back to normal soon."

The lights announce that they have reached Devlin's floor; another ding and the doors glide open to reveal five dark suits and white shirts waiting to get on.

———

He is always unsure of what to call her. To him, mostly, she is Irina, Russian _evil fucking bitch_ assassin, the woman who killed his father. To her, she is Mom.

Sydney received little peace from the few hours she spent with the former Laura Bristow. Told him one day she wished she had left her mother dead. The topic rarely comes up now, and he is glad.

She slips into the building at noon for her monthly briefing, sits with perfect posture in the chair in front of his desk and answers questions in her crisp, proper, literature student voice — "yes, I did" and "no, I did not." He refers to her mother as "Derevko."

"Anything on Petrov?" he asks, after they have passed the older items.

"Yes." Her eyes pool a little and her face becomes more agitated. This, he knows, means Petrov is dead. "SD-6 sent a team in to interrogate him. They got a name, Nikolai Marusov, and then they killed him."

"Sydney — "

A click at the doorway.

"Michael, I can't go over the mission specs unless you give me a mission." Watkins, leaning on the cane, has just saved him from the admonish-or-condole decision. A different awkward moment, instead. But Vaughn thinks it may — if he plays it right — turn out to be more enjoyable. _Will Fucking Tippin._

"Oh." Watkins looks down at Sydney as if she's just noticed her, which would, he realizes, be atypically unobservant of her. "Sorry." Sydney, meanwhile, has snapped around to stare at the other woman, and maybe, he thinks, she even tensed a little in reaction to Watkins's use of "Michael." _Or you might be imagining things._

"Sydney, this is Christine Watkins. She's working on the SD-6 case now. Chris, Sydney Bristow." A definite reaction — little panic eyes — to "Chris."

"Hi." Watkins smiles, but it is mouth only, eyes still cool blue. Sydney freezes her face, a half-developed lie, searching for an emotion and drawing a blank. "Hello." He wonders if the cane is as conspicuous to others as it is to him.

If there is a winner of the exchange, he decides, it is Watkins. And he realizes he wants her to win. _Will Fucking Tippin._ Sydney is a good liar, no doubt, but Watkins has spent every minute of the last seven years lying. _Practice makes perfect, or something like that._

There is a startling overlap here, as the two women consider each other. Clashing standards, he thinks. Because before Sydney Bristow, Christine Watkins was the standard. He has let numerous women walk into his life, fall short of the standard, and walk back out, until eventually the futility of that surrounded him.

And then there was Sydney. Not the Sydney with the pink hair and the train wreck mouth. Sydney-as-standard came later — in the precision of her missions, their warehouse conversations, the way her beauty peaks when she is most determined.

A combination of time and Sydney let him replace the old standard. But in his mind, they have always held a certain sort of shared perfection of personalities, appearances, emotions, intelligence. And when he presses himself for a critique now — current Sydney versus old Chris — he cannot find fault in either.

The Chris of today has suffered from time. And experience, he suspects. She left him a Sydney and came back something else entirely. Dark. Dirty. Lined. Flawed. He can see beyond the ice eyes — knows where to look.

And the other standard?

Will Fucking Tippin.

———

He turns to his computer after Sydney leaves and starts typing her report. Pauses for a moment to figure out what he needs to do once he finishes — or if there is something else he is supposed to be working on now — and wishes, not for the first time, to have his Post-it notes back.

Vaughn spent the years after graduation — UCLA, poli-sci, and _pretty damn high_ in his class — as something marginally higher than a gofer in the governor's office. Lots of little tasks to do, to remember, all scribbled down on Post-it notes, stuck around his desk, on the computer monitor. Night classes, for a master's that never quite materialized, then finally the call from Langley. Would you like a job, and _no shit I'd like a job, why the hell do you think I sent you my fucking resume all those years ago, don't you know who my father was?_

It didn't take them long to tell him the Post-it notes were going to have to go. You can't write down classified material and leave it stuck to your computer monitor, they said, which made sense. Notes now in his head, special folders on his hard drive, encrypted and secured, the key changed by someone from tech support twice a week. He is allowed cryptic scribblings on legal pads, presuming, of course, that they stay on his person or locked in his briefcase. Vaughn pulls one out as Watkins barges into his office for the fourth time in the last two days.

"We get a location on Marusov yet?"

He thinks it is beginning to feel like old times. Of course, in old times, the office was dingier, and smaller, and she would shut the door so they could discuss things that had nothing to do with work. "I just sent the name through. Everything's — "

" — slow. I've noticed." He gives her a faint smile, thinks about the ones she used to warrant, and wonders about the things they have effectively ignored today. Wonders why she barges into _his_ office, seems to want to spend time discussing things with _him_, with all those things said in the end. Perhaps it is just familiarity, important in a new building with new agents, after seven years in a wholly different place.

If he gave her the old smile, he wonders, would she melt the ice eyes and return it? _Maybe her eyes can't melt anymore._

"So that's Sydney." He nods. Safer territory than his thoughts currently. "You're good with her." A pause, and maybe a shadow on her face. Then back to matter-of-fact Chris. "My handler was an ass."

———

Couch and television again, this time a sweaty Budweiser bottle instead of the Coke. Surely his liver has recovered enough — and besides, he needs to stop thinking.

Maybe it is part of the job, like brush passes and dead drops and looking for tails. He knows he is not the only one to do this. Sydney occasionally walks into a late-night meeting with cabernet on her breath. Name the bar, and Weiss will outpace him. _And Chris could fucking drink you under the table._

The thought flits across his mind, flaps and jumps and _won't go away_.

Your father didn't drink like this. Maybe it had something to do with his mother. Maybe it had something to do with him. His father, he thinks, didn't do a lot of the things he does. Couldn't have thought the things he thinks. Couldn't have had these doubts.

But they had other things in common. Even more so than him, the job was his father's life. William C. Vaughn, he knows, lived the Agency until the day it killed him.

Vaughn remembers a lot about that day, the days after it.

The way his mother clutched the phone — pea green, like the rest of the kitchen — as she sank to the floor. The pain on her face as the phone bobbed up and down on its spiral cord beside her, and that it took her a long time to cry. Shock for so long, and he knew something was horribly wrong, asked her quietly, "Mommy, what happened?" He had been trying to abandon the moniker for something more mature — "Mom" or even "Mother" — but it seemed the only thing to call her at the time.

It took her a long time — maybe hours, he thinks, but probably not — to recover. To cease holding him so tight he wanted to squirm. To finally speak, and tell him that Dad would not be coming home. Ever.

After that, there were the black lace gloves on her hands. A chilly funeral home with faded ivy-print wallpaper, mahogany crown molding he traced with his eyes when he caught her stabbing at her face with a tissue. The cemetery and its rows of uniform white headstones. The stoic men in dark suits.

And then it was back to Michael and Mom. At least, he thinks, he will leave no one behind.

You'll never have the white picket fence, Michael.


	6. 1x5: Swallow

Chapter 1.5 — Swallow

Friday, July 19, 2002

On a good day, the paper bags take less than an hour to reach Vaughn's desk. Seconds after an agent drops them into one of a number of predetermined trash cans, they are snagged by another agent posing as a janitor or grounds crew worker. From there, they go into the backpack of a new recruit, in this case a sophomore at UCLA, who rides the bus downtown. The bag is brush-passed into the hand of a typically-dressed businessman a block away from CIA headquarters. From there, it goes into a plastic bag and upstairs via a courier.

It still amuses Vaughn that they use a plastic bag to enclose something that was just in a trash can, and when one arrives on his desk at 9:46, he gives it the usual ironic half-smile. Sydney has done the writing today:

Vaughn, SD-6 located Marusov in Helsinki. We fly out tomorrow morning at eight. What's the countermission?

Sydney

The location is important, he knows, not only to the SD-6 team, but also the rest of the Agency. The name Nikolai Marusov "raised red flags from here to Moscow" as someone who might have information on the location of the nuke, according to the memo Kretchmer sent him earlier.

Kretchmer raps on his doorframe before Vaughn can start the walk to his office. He enters, followed by an agent Vaughn does not recognize.

"Understand you got something?"

"Yes, SD-6 placed Marusov in Helsinki. Bristow and Dixon fly out tomorrow morning."

"Okay. Why don't we call a meeting, say 10:30?" Vaughn nods, and Kretchmer glances at the man standing behind him. "This is Scott Robertson, also here with us from Russia. He'll be on the SD-6 case, at least temporarily. Agent Robertson, Michael Vaughn."

Robertson offers a slight smile, shifting the deep crevices in his face around, and moves — wiry and efficient — toward Vaughn, hand outstretched. "Nice to meet you."

"Same here." The crevices remind Vaughn of sand after heavy winds, lines all winding around dark brown eyes, wedged beneath short salt-and-pepper gray. A sharp contrast from Wakins' _trust-me_ face, he realizes, and decides not to ask if Robertson knows her.

———

No cane today, and she does not protest when Vaughn suggests they take the stairs to the conference room, but the muscles in her arms bulge as she grips the handrail.

"Did you ever work with Agent Robertson?"

The muscles pop a little more, and the rest of her body halts when the hand locks at its position on the rail. "Scott Robertson?"

"Yes."

"He was my handler." Short a little volume, but she makes up for it in venom.

"He's been assigned to the SD-6 team."

She laughs — a little bitter thing, "son of a bitch" under her breath — and starts on the next step. "Of course. It would figure."

"Anything I should know?"

"He's an ass, but obviously they cleared him." She pauses, rolls top teeth over bottom lip. "Then again, you don't see him walking around with his guts sewed in."

———

The SD-6 team — minus Jack Bristow, plus Robertson — automatically assembles ten minutes early. They have watched SD-6 wander through Rambaldi artifacts for weeks, and the urgency of this mission is a respected, if not welcome, change.

Kretchmer begins the meeting by slapping a pile of photocopied pages down on the table. Grainy black-and-white photos, most likely shot from a telephoto lens, and what sparse data the CIA has on Marusov.

"Nikolai Marusov. Age 45. Birthplace Kiev, Ukraine," Kretchmer says. "KGB through '91, then went freelance. Apparently he's hooked up with Derevko's network. Name popped in our system a couple times, and the Russians had a field day with it. Apparently Red Balloon was in his jurisdiction when he was KGB."

Kretchmer pauses and looks out over the wire rims to gauge comprehension. "The folks upstairs agreed to let us keep the op within SD-6 to maintain our agents' covers, but they want Bristow and Dixon to do whatever it takes to get intel off the guy."

"Are they trained in...torture?" McClure asks, still green enough to use the word, instead of more ambiguous terms. _Not torture, kid. We don't do torture, here at the CIA. Try "information extraction" instead. We do plenty of that._

"Marusov is KGB-trained. He's not going to break under interrogation in the amount of time Bristow and Dixon have. SD-6 will expect this to be a quick snatch-and-grab mission," Kretchmer explains. "Actually, what they suggested was a, uh, swallow op."

The term is rarely used, and a stagnant pause almost always follows it. A swallow is a female operative who seduces for secrets, and a surprising number of them exist. The Agency's dirty, quiet little secret.

For Vaughn, shock quickly spins into anger, and he snaps the silence. "You can't be serious! Sydney isn't trained to do that, and she certainly didn't sign on for it."

His eyes dart a quick circle. No one is eager to respond.

"Agent Vaughn, I understand your concern for your agent," Kretchmer finally says. "But that was the operation they drafted. They feel Marusov would be particularly...vulnerable...to that approach." _That was the op a bunch of men that didn't give a damn about Sydney drafted._ He longs for the glowering presence of Jack Bristow, who, he thinks, would shoot this down with a few choice words and maybe a twitch of emotion. Instead, he gets a room full of blank faces and eyes on the laminate_._

Am I the only person who has a problem with this? Eyes dart again, but there is no Jack Bristow, no support. His mind begins slipping, grasping for contingencies, loopholes — anything to keep from going to the warehouse tonight and telling her to do _that_. Finally, the blankest face speaks.

"Vaughn's right." Watkins starts softly — reluctantly, he thinks. But her voice grows louder, more assertive, as she continues. "It's a high risk op like this. You send Bristow in with no training, she screws it up, and you get nothing. Try to pull something like this at the last minute, double agent with no preparation, things go badly, you might push her triple. Not to mention the fact that regs state clearly it's a last resort."

Thank you, Chris. He tries to catch her eyes, but she is staring down Kretchmer. And her words are working, he realizes. The argument is logical, perhaps given more weight by her status as the only woman in the room.

Until Robertson steals her momentum. "You did it."

Holy fuck. He snaps to her and realizes the reason for her ramrod focus on Kretchmer. Old fears. Old words. Robertson's response sucks the noise out of the room; eyes turn back to the laminate.

Except for ice eyes. "That — "

They slide slowly into a glare. Tiny, tough little blue slits as she shifts her focus to Robertson.

" — was a last resort. And it doesn't mean it should be done."

Asshole. He feels strangely drawn to jumping across the table and defending an old love's honor. Strangely hollow with old fears realized. This even before Robertson's response, which loosens every jaw in the room.

"Or maybe you're a whore and she's not."

A strange feeling, at that. Choking, anger tight in his throat. Stabbing, clutching rage.

And still she will not look at him.

———

And so Vaughn gets his desired outcome, though not in a desirable manner. The operation is redrawn; they will try drugs instead.

First, Kretchmer asks Robertson — his voice a new precedent in cold — to leave. He turns to Watkins, as well, probably to ask if she'd like to take a minute, but the question never reaches the air. She pops her eyebrows upward and gives a little half shrug: _I can take it._

Vaughn is not so sure, but when they adjourn, she flees the conference room — confident but quick — and disappears into the maze of cubicles. _Not that she would ever want you to follow._

He gives it serious consideration, but returns instead to his office. Weiss walks in a few minutes later, tense and stompy.

"You're doing it again." He closes the door and stands, arms crossed.

"What?"

"Do I have to say what? You back there. Freaking out over that op. Putting Sydney before the Agency."

"What the hell is wrong with you? That operation was bullshit and you know it. Watkins was right."

"You were emotional. Watkins was rational." Weiss uncrosses his arms. "A little too rational, considering the circumstances, but — "

Well fuck off, Eric. Vaughn rises, slams his palms on the desktop. Glares, glowers for a moment before slowly striding around the desk. Moves a few feet away, seethes a little, and wonders if perhaps four years of friendship will end in fisticuffs.

Decides he doesn't care.

"Get out. Get the hell out of my office. This has nothing to do with being emotionally involved. It's called not following stupid orders like some little sheep. Maybe you should try it some time."

No fisticuffs. Weiss merely pivots and leaves. The door clicks shut with a peculiar finality.

———

The air has taken a humid turn, gray skies threatening thunderstorms, when Vaughn arrives at the warehouse. Sydney's Land Rover is the only vehicle parked outside, and his insides stew a little. He is not sure if she has done an interrogation before and isn't looking forward to doling out this countermission. _Not that the alternative wouldn't have been a thousand times worse._

She is sitting cross-legged on a large metal table, novel of late. The last few times they have met here, she has paced like a tiger at the zoo — a little feral, a little perturbed. He borrows that feeling today.

"Hey." A smile, mostly soft brown eyes.

"Hello." Vaughn waits one beat, then launches, more adept at the businesslike tone of late. "Marusov raised all kinds of red flags. The CIA and FSB think he may be able to give us some intel on the location of the nuke. Have you or Dixon done an interrogation before?"

She sharpens her face, eyebrows scrunching. "I haven't. I think Dixon has. We're both trained, but — "

"Marusov was KGB. Roughing him up won't work, so you don't have to worry about that." He hands her an envelope, syringe and vial. "Sodium Pentothal. Anything you can get. Locations, possible locations, groups, individuals. There's information in the envelope on dead drop procedure if you get anything."

"Okay."

"If you can get the manuscript, fine. But the CIA needs the nuke to be your first priority on this one. Do you have any questions?"

His mind moves toward the door, but he forces himself to hold for her response.

"Yeah. Are you all right?"

"What?" _Not all right. Definitely not all right. But I can't even begin to tell you why._

"You seem a little agitated," she smiles, trying to tease, but he can see her slide away the hope in her eyes. Finds he enjoys it, even now. "Is this about...Agent Watkins? Is that her name? You two seemed chummy."

"A long time ago, maybe." He glances at the floor for a moment, then returns his focus to her face. _Noah Hicks. Will Fucking Tippin. _"Chris and I dated for about a year before she went to Russia."

He hasn't answered her other questions, but the interrogation ends there. Sydney shifts her eyes to a distant pile of boxes. Forces out one soft word. "Oh."

He knows exactly how she feels.


	7. 1x6: Things Left Buried

Chapter 1.6 — Things Left Buried

Los Angeles sprawls.

For the bankers and executives, its center is the new downtown — skyscrapers and windows harsh in pushing back the sun. Flashy, gleaming, and corporate.

It rumbles out of this for miles, into a sizzle of stucco, tamales and mariachi bands. Into fields of concrete and grass where earthquakes have claimed buildings, and no one has swooped in to build on the graves.

Always something. Stumpy apartment buildings and corner convenience stores give way to more skyscrapers. Miles and miles of something, laced together by a square street grid, omnipresent palm trees maintaining some semblance of consistency.

Deep in the midst of the sprawl, far from the shining new downtown, are the few blocks of crumble where Michael Vaughn spent a year of his life. He has not been back until today.

The center is the bar. Nameless — unless you count the ancient neon Budweiser in the dingy window — because the rusty bolts above the door haven't held a sign in years, it is the center because people go there. Here, that is enough.

Outside, the street threatens in the dark, desolate and lurky. It makes him wish he hadn't locked his gun in the glove box, and there is some relief, training aside, when his hand reaches the loose old metal knob. There is a trick to it — pull to the right as you turn, jiggle a little if that doesn't work — but he knows this, and chipped-paint green opens easily.

The inside is dull by most standards, vibrant compared to the outside. Shops on both sides, and their strings of unsuccessful tenants, crowd it at the entrance. Beyond them, it fans out, spares enough space for two worn-felt pool tables and a small wooden stage.

A lot of blues from that stage. Aged skill from old men in flannel shirts with credentials to play what they did, waiting for people to drink enough to tip well. Stumbling young renditions of "The Thrill is Gone," which somehow fit just as well, because for most of the clientele, it is. The stage is silent tonight. Instead, Dylan tangled up in blue from the jukebox and clacking from the pool tables.

He felt mismatched here seven years ago, and the suits were cheaper then. Feet shuffle on smooth concrete, eyes scan, and she is exactly where he expected, matching because she fits in everywhere.

He is here for many reasons. Because her pain still tumbles inside him. Because he is the only person who knows where to look in the sprawl. Because he is the only person looking. Because of guilt.

Old words.

———

She broke the news on an old plaid couch with his lips on her neck. Pushed at his shoulder, told him to stop; there was something important she needed to say.

"They had an opening in Moscow. Infiltration op. I leave next Wednesday."

"What?" The only response, a torrent of shock rushing across his face. "How long have you known?

"They called me in this morning." She locked her eyes, sad and storming, on his. "Michael, I'm sorry it had to end this way."

"What do you mean, end?" He stood with this, stalked across the tiny apartment. Felt the need to _move_.

"As much as I'd like to play the, 'as soon as I get back game,' you know and I know that I can't even guarantee we'll see each other again. This was inevitable. I thought you knew that."

He had known. He had also spent a lot of time forcing it from his mind. Ignored it, and eventually enough days went by without _this_ happening that he'd allowed himself to think it never would.

Pointless, foolish even, to ask her to stay. But there are few other options when the rock you've been holding suddenly crumbles. Flows through your fingers. Scatters all over the floor.

"Then stay. Find a way to stay."

A half-snort, half-laugh. All sarcastic. "Sure. Tell the CIA 'thanks, but no thanks.' I came in to be a field agent. You knew that going into this. You knew it wouldn't last."

He ceased pacing with that, turned to face her. "Quit the CIA."

"You can't be serious. I've barely been in a year. They won't just let me up and quit. And that's assuming I want to quit. This is why I came in. I've been waiting a year for this."

"And so now what? Time's up, goodbye, nice to know you? Did the last year not mean anything to you?"

"It did, Michael. It did." She paused. "But I don't exactly have a choice here."

"They made you wait a year. Things change in a year. There has to be some room for flexibility."

"Yes, there is. But I can't march in and tell them that I can't go to Russia because I'm involved in a serious relationship with another agent. In case you forgot, we're not supposed to be doing this."

"There's a way. There has to be a way." And then his private fear. "You know what they're going to want you to do. Beautiful woman, your background. _That's_ inevitable, Chris."

She stared at her fingers a moment with that, twisted them around each other. Something unforgettable in her eyes as she frowned and glared at him, and maybe, he thought, it was her private fear as well.

"I can't be the woman you want me to be. You fall in love with a fucking spy and now you want me to stick around — and what, be barefoot and pregnant? You want the little house with the white picket fence? It doesn't work. Not in our world. You'll never have the white picket fence, Michael. You should know that better than anyone."

A strange thing happens when deep fears reach air. Stranger still when they are mixed with desperation. Anger erupts. Inhibition comes quickly.

"Fine. _Go._" He walked to the door, but it was not enough to cool down."Go over there and screw some missile programmer. Be a whore for secrets. I asked, Chris. Damn it, I asked."

He'd walked out after that. Didn't see her again for seven years.

———

She stands out for one reason only. In an overwhelmingly beer-and-whiskey place, she drinks vodka on ice. A surprise to Vaughn, although it shouldn't be; he has always associated her with a billion brands of beer and a good time. A dark, glossy ponytail ends between her shoulder blades. New jeans, black t-shirt, elbows resting on the bar and eyes staring into her drink.

She takes a substantial sip as he approaches, and either it doesn't burn or she does not acknowledge it. She does not acknowledge him, either, as he claims the stool to the right of her, sliding his hands onto the scuffed wood counter.

The bartender is middle-aged and rather portly, but quick. "What do you want?"

"Nothing for me. Thanks." He tries to dismiss the man with his hand, but the gesture is ineffective; the bartender stands and stares for a second.

"Have a beer, Michael. You already stick out like a fucking sore thumb."

"I'll have a Bud, then."

She waits until the bartender slides it in front of him to speak again.

"You here to gloat, or rub it in? You called it, Michael." Another sip, her hand firm around the tumbler. Her drink, he thinks, is perfect for bitter words. "Nope. I know you. You're not here to gloat. You're here because of some fucking guilt trip."

Bullseye, Chris. "I'm here because I thought maybe you needed a friend."

"All of my friends are dead."

She tilts the glass, drains the remnants, the cubes rattling back to its base as she rights it, the important contents gone. The glass goes back to the counter with a subdued clink, and she motions to the bartender.

He watches a bead of condensation form on the tumbler and drip down the side, making a faint rainbow against the dim lights.

"Chris, you know I didn't mean that. We both said a lot of things we didn't mean."

"Obviously, you meant it at some level, or you wouldn't have said it." Her tone is level, but somehow the words are still scalding. "I didn't drive here, and I can drink like an adult. So you can take off in your good suit and feel like you tried."

His eyes trace the circular grooves in the counter for awhile. "Look. I just thought maybe you'd want to talk."

"I've done a lot of things I don't like to talk about, Michael. That tops the list. And what makes you think I'd want to talk to you, of all people?"

Because I'm the only one here, damn it. "Chris, I'm sorry. If I could take it back, I would."

"Great. You're only seven fucking years late. And what the hell makes you think you can just apologize for something like that?"

"Oh, come on, Chris. You think what you said didn't hurt?"

The little bitter laugh, at this. "I don't recall ever calling anybody a whore. You're still single, aren't you?" He nods, short. His beer is empty. "At least we were both accurate."

"Not accurate, Chris. Not at all. Shit, you think I meant that? How could you possibly think I meant that? I was scared. I was desperate, damn it. I cared about you."

She softens a bit at this. Slides her hand across the top of her head, stares down into the glass. "It wasn't perfect, but we were doing pretty good. Right up until the end. How'd we fuck it up so quick?"

"You left." Simple and infinitely complex.

"I had to leave. I didn't have to leave like that. You think I wanted to leave you? If I had known how serious things were going to get, I never would have pushed it in the first place."

"So I was supposed to be some fling before you went away forever?"

"Well, yes. I mean, what did you think? You knew I was training to go into the field. You knew they were going to send me as soon as soon as they had a slot."

"I thought about it a lot at first. And then after a couple months went by, I guess I thought they weren't going to send you. I started to push it from my mind."

She pauses, watching the bartender pour her another drink. Continues after he places it in front of her. "See, I thought about it. Every damn day I thought about it. How some day I was going to have to tell you I had to leave. I thought a lot about breaking it off, but maybe I got lulled into thinking I wouldn't have to leave, too. That maybe they'd never need me."

"So we were both pretending. Did it ever occur to you to not break it off?"

She turns to stare at him, darts a quick glance around the bar, then continues. "You can't be serious. It's been seven years since I've even been in the country, and the only reason I'm here is because of this." She waves a hand over her abdomen, then moves it back to the glass. "Almost everything I did was quiet ops, highly classified. You mean to tell me you would have waited, indefinitely, with no word? There was no way I could have done that to you, or me."

She snaps her head suddenly to look past him, as the back of the bar erupts in raucous cheering. A man by the pool table raises his cue and shouts, "Pay up, bitch!"

Vaughn waits for the place settle before speaking. "Do you ever just stop and think about how absurd this all is?"

"How absurd what is?"

"What we do. Why we had to break up. That they expect us to appear completely normal, and really — "

" — we're as fucked-up as it gets. Try going over there. The job is all you are. I remember waking up one morning and just thinking, 'I would kill for a beer and a cheeseburger.' And at the time, I was Katia, or Olga — " she scrunches her nose at this " — or who knows who, so of course it was out of the question. That's the worst part. It's not what you have to do. It's what you can't do."

The bartender wordlessly deposits another beer in front of him before she continues. "You know, Michael, you're the last person I thought I'd hear say that: absurd."

He stares into the beer bottle for a minute. _And you are the last person I thought I'd be discussing this with. _"You remember Jimmy Piersall?"

"Jimmy, with the hair thing?" She flits fingers across the top of her head. "Yeah. Whatever happened to him?"

"Shuffling papers at Langley. But do you remember how he came in, all 'I'm going to save the world?'"

She giggles, which he knows means the alcohol is finally beginning to kick in. "Yeah. And I remember thinking, 'Jimmy, you're the last person _in_ the world that's going to _save_ the fucking world.'"

He chuckles briefly, but presses on. "But didn't you feel a little bit of that, when you came in? That maybe you weren't going to save the world, but you were going to help?"

"Sure. I think we all do."

"Lately, I feel like things are just spinning in place. Like what I do has no impact, and everything I've given up was just a worthless sacrifice."

"Michael, what we do — " She turns to him, eyes lazy. " — is important. That's all I've got at this point."

"Are you drunk?"

She laughs, loose and natural. "Getting there. You?"

"I don't think so."

"Fuck you. I had a huge head start."

Maybe he is drunk, he realizes, because this is hilarious as hell. His laughter sounds almost alien after months of scant use. Hers is guttural, deep, and she stares into her lap, a sad smile on her face, when it finally dies. When he looks down, his hand covers hers, and he slides it away slowly.

"You know, just because you came here and we had a good laugh, this doesn't make everything better all of a sudden." She pauses to stare at the bare hand for a moment before continuing. "God, I was so angry with you when I left."

"Because of what I said?"

"Yes. But more because — " she frowns slightly " — you ruined the last normal week I had. Damn it Michael, we should have been together. We should have come here, gone to the beach, hit a Kings game, fucked like rabbits. Anything. But we should have stayed together until the end."

He overlooks the tiny jolt of her last suggestion. "And ignored the fact that you were leaving?"

"Not ignore it. You had every right to be upset. You had every right to be sad. But you didn't have to be unreasonable."

"Chris, we could go around in circles like this all night. It isn't going to change the past."

She frowns, looks at her half-empty tumbler. "You're right. That doesn't mean I'm going to forgive you."

"I didn't ask you to."

"Then I suppose I shouldn't ask you, either. I am sorry, Michael. You should know that. I said what I said because I knew it would hurt you. I was upset, and I shouldn't have pushed you like that."

"I suppose we could call a truce."

A tiny, cynical smile shoots across her face at that. "Can we? Can we really ignore it?"

"I don't know, Chris. I really don't know."

She folds her hands together, rests her head in them for a moment, then lifts it and looks beyond him to scan the rest of the bar. He watches the clouds pass over her eyes, wonders if she is thinking the same thing he is.

"Maybe we should try."

She is.

———

Drinks are finished silently. She laughs, a little unsteady, as she clanks the tumbler down on the counter.

"I think my liver's had enough punishment for the night. What about you?"

Vaughn nods, turning to halt his quiet peripheral study of the new lines on her face, then waves to the bartender. "Can we settle, when you get a chance?" A little louder than he'd intended.

"You're so not ready to drive home."

"I'll walk it off."

"Michael, you've had — " she starts counting on her fingers, then abandons this task with a lazy smile " — a lot of beers. You're going to be walking for awhile."

"You still in the same place?"

"Yeah." Careful, despite inebriation, the mark of good training. "_They've_ got this nice little program where they sublet your cruddy apartment while they send you halfway around the globe."

"Then let me walk you home and we'll see where I'm at from there."

She chuckles. "Sure, because two drunks are able to defend themselves so much better than one."

It may be a bad idea. But it feels like a good night for bad ideas.

———

Damp emptiness greets them when they step through the chipped green door. The remnants of a thunderstorm — puddles along the sidewalk, humidity seeping about their feet — seem to soften the harsh darkness of the street. The breeze carries a chill, good for drowsy skin.

They begin the walk to her apartment silently, upholding the stillness like the others around them. A small group now, but the population here will increase as the night goes on — become more belligerent, disrupting the silence. It is a nighttime place.

For now, they are two of a handful, feet _spat spat spat _on the wet pavement, through the little crunchy piles of broken glass. Past the old movie theater with the empty white marquee and soap on the ticket-taker's windows.

Most of the businesses of their time are gone, boarded up or replaced by other establishments struggling to survive on the margin. The deli, he is pleased to note, has somehow survived. Others — record store, drug store, laundromat — have been replaced by others of their own kind. New names, signs slightly brighter, waiting for the cycle to inevitably end their existence.

The street darkens before they reach the intersection and spatter across the street, ignoring faded crosswalk stripes. She halts for a moment when they reach the curb, presses a hand into her abdomen and slumps a bit in the middle.

"You okay?" It is the first thing he has said since they left the bar. He takes a step toward her and instinctively, but consciously this time, places his hand in the middle of her back.

"Yeah. Just give me a sec."

"Are you sure you should drink this much with...that?"

"Yes, Michael. Vodka. Doctor's orders." She giggles and straightens, but does not move away from the heat of his hand. "Come on."

Her apartment complex is an old affair, burgundy bricks and black metal fire escapes. She can afford better now, but he suspects she feels comfortable hidden in the crumble she has been a part of for so long. He wonders if she was a part of the crumble in Moscow.

Up a few weathered concrete steps slowly, and then they stop at the door to the building. He removes his hand from her back.

"Do I have to give you a sobriety test?" She grins and throws the door open into a narrow hallway. "The couch is yours if you want it."

He shakes his head. _Bad idea. Very bad idea._

"At least come up and get some coffee into you."

It is at this point that he begins contemplating the meaning of the word truce. This continues — with no resolution — as he follows her silently through the dingy yellow walls of the hallway, into the musty elevator, and down an equally dingy second-floor hallway, until they reach number seventeen.

Truce doesn't mean pick things up where we left off, minus the bitter end.

Perhaps it does. Perhaps it is habit. It certainly is mutual, instinctive even, when she slips up to him and they meet in an old kiss.

Long. Deep. Soft. Old. Perfect.

She presses warm against him, and he slides his hands down her back, around her waist, pulling her closer. She tastes dry-drunk, remnants of vodka stinging his tongue. She tastes awful. She tastes real.

Eventually, she pulls back, takes a deep breath. "Do you still want to come in?"

A new meaning to the question.

"Are you sure?" _Am I sure?_ "What about tomorrow?"

"Fuck tomorrow." A nice motto, he thinks. Something for t-shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers.

Her hand shakes a little as she tries to force her key into the aging lock. Finally, she succeeds, and the door creaks open. It has been seven years, but not much inside has changed.

Fuck tomorrow, then.

* * *

**Author's note on chapter ratings from here on out:** The next chapter (1.7) will be rated NC-17. The rest (1.8 until the end of the fic) will continue to be rated R. If NC-17 isn't your thing, or you shouldn't be reading it, please skip the next chapter. The rating of the entire fic will go up to NC-17, but this applies really to only that chapter (1.7).


	8. 1x7: Nostalgia Run

** Chapter 1.7 — Nostalgia Run **

Due to the ff.net policy regarding NC-17 fiction, this chapter is no longer hosted here, in order to maintain the work's R rating. This chapter is available at http://www.geocities.com/laras_dice/vera/107.html. 

If NC-17 is not your thing, or if you should not be reading it, please skip it. The rest of the fic carries an R rating.


	9. 1x8: Settling

Chapter 1.8 — Settling

Saturday, July 20, 2002

There are four ways to reach Michael Vaughn. The first three — home phone, work phone, and pager — are far less reliable, used only by those that don't know of the fourth, or don't require its immediacy.

The fourth, his cell phone, has been a permanent appendage since he joined the CIA — even more so since he became a handler. Important enough that it is a priority when purchasing clothes — suitable pockets a necessity. Important enough that there are extra batteries located at various stopping points in his life — desk drawer, glove box, kitchen counter.

In seven years, its has never been more than a few feet away from him, and today is no exception. The answering service is set to come on at 50 or so rings — he hasn't checked the exact number, but knows it is preposterous, designed to never be needed. One beer-filled night, Weiss suggested he change the default message: "Hi, this is Michael. If you're listening to this message, I'm either completely fucking unconscious or dead."

He is neither, but he is also not the first one to wake when it rings at 4:55 after another beer-filled night. This person is Watkins, sprawled mostly across his stomach, where she passed out shortly after they finished. Eyes snapping open and body tense at the first ring, she gives him two before speaking, hand firm around his shoulder.

"Answer your damn phone, or I'll answer it for you."

He wakes with this, and absorbs surroundings drowsily. His back itches from the carpet, stomach feels the weight of her begin to lift. Her hair sweeps from his chest as she rolls away with a groan, starts to stand and caves at the middle. He rises quickly with this, wraps an arm around her waist and supports her to standing.

They stumble the few feet to the couch together, and she flops into it stiffly. Vaughn waits for a few seconds, watches her pull down the mismatched plaid blanket draped over the back and wrap herself in it. When her eyes close and the grimace leaves her face, he moves toward the sound of the still-ringing phone.

And so it takes fifteen rings for Michael Vaughn to answer his cell phone. Given the circumstances, he considers this pretty good. Only a limited number of people have the number in the first place, and at this hour of the morning, he considers only two scenarios. The first is a mushroom cloud somewhere, but given the silence of Watkins's phone, one of his agents is far more likely.

"Hello?"

"Oh." The caller is Sydney, which he has also assumed, because SD-6 would have to be in flames for Dixon to want to meet at this time. "I'm sorry. I must have the wrong number. Sorry to bother you."

It is only a couple-second fake wrong number, her voice through the receiver. But Vaughn still feels strange as he hits the end button. He lays this on the fact that his clothes are still strewn across the floor. They are collected quietly before a quick trip to the bathroom, where he splashes cold water on his face, runs a little through his hair, and tries not to think about the implications of reality.

He wants more time to linger, to think, to search the medicine cabinet and find out what pain medication she takes. Instead, he dresses quickly, this late-night action familiar, although the locale isn't. The light from the bathroom shines off her eyes, quiet on the couch, as he steps out.

"Everything okay?"

"I don't know yet."

"Take my gun or my car, preferably both. I don't want to be responsible for you getting your ass shot off."

He crosses the room, collects his wallet and her gun. "Are you going to be okay? You need anything?"

"Nah. I'm just gonna sleep it off here." She pulls the blanket a little tighter and closes her eyes, which he takes as a cue to leave.

He picks up her keys and purse by the door, roots through the latter to find the clip. His hand is on the doorknob when he notices the cane, leaning against the wall. Steps soft over the linoleum and then the carpet, he moves it, propping it against the arm of the couch.

Her voice reaches him as he turns back toward the door.

"Michael, you're right. This is absurd."

He does not ask which _this_ she is referring to.

———

The night is even cooler as he steps out of the side of the building. The parking lot here is fenced, and well-lit, which somehow manages to be enough on most nights. He walks across the disintegrating asphalt and considers the keychain in his hand. The keys have not changed much, and he assumes — correctly, it turns out — that their matches are still the same.

Her car is a black Mazda Miata, apparently fresh out of storage, still suffering from the grocery cart ding on the driver's side that turned her ballistic. Too flashy for protocol, but she said it made for a better cover: "Nobody who drives a car like this works for the CIA."

That settles a little uncomfortably on his mind, and it takes him awhile to realize why. _Sydney is going to see you pull up in this._ The fact that he is wearing the same, more-wrinkled clothes as their previous meeting can — hopefully without stammering — be explained as falling asleep on the couch._ Couch, floor, Chris. Same difference._ He can't think of a way to explain away the very obviously not-his car, and considers stopping to swap it for his, but he is already running late — starting farther from the warehouse than usual.

He wonders — not for the first time — if maybe Chris is right as he glides through the night, a tiny black blur. The car, the clothes, the time more appropriate to an executive sneaking home to his wife after a night with the mistress, and some of this is how he feels. Through five gears quickly on the highway, not sure if a cop would believe his CIA credentials, the gun tucked beneath his belt, if he happens to chance upon radar. He doesn't, and makes good time. Beats Sydney there, which won't help the car predicament. _Screw it. There are a million reasons why you could be driving this, and only one centers around what really happened._

He enters carefully, the door still ringing slightly into the night as he closes it, one hand pressed against the metal to muffle noise. The first switch provides enough light to find one of the wobbly wooden tables at the front of the cavernous place. He hoists himself to sitting on one and waits.

Sydney walks in a few minutes later, hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail, clad in sweatpants and a tank top. Traveling clothes, and he realizes she must be on her way to the airport. Her face looks only slightly flustered, but her pace is quick.

"What's going on?" A preemptive strike, perhaps too abrupt. _Although she'd better have something more important to discuss than my choice in transportation._

She seems a little startled by this, and leans against the table across from him. Waits awhile before speaking, which, he learns, is because it is the same old tense topic.

"It's Will. I think he's getting worse, and with me having to leave again, I'm just...worried about him."

Fuck, Sydney. I know he's been getting worse. He's been getting worse in your eyes for a long time now.

"Sydney, we've talked about this. The Agency has counseling — "

" — and I told you he doesn't want therapy." She crosses her arms, waits for him to spin this around in the familiar circle.

"There's a difference between what he wants and what he needs, Syd. You can be his — " _Friend? Yes, friend._ " — friend all you want, and I'm sure that helps, but he needs a professional."

"He won't go see anyone, Vaughn. I've tried convincing him — I don't even know how many times. There has to be something else you can do."

Please don't tell me you called me out here so we can have this damn argument again at 5:30 in the morning. "Sydney, if you want help for him, I can get it. But that's all I have to offer. You need to tell me what it is you want me to do."

"I don't know what I want you to do. That's the whole problem, Vaughn." _And I don't have a solution, Syd. I've never had a solution._ She fusses at the lumps around her ponytail holder. "Anyway, I'm sorry I called you out here."

Her voice turns bitter at the end, and this pinches a little. "Sydney, I told you that you could call me any time." _And up until tonight, that was a hundred percent true. You would have thrown on some clothes, hopped into your normal CIA car and driven here without a second thought._

Sydney is silent for a moment, her eyes tracing him. "Are you okay? I mean, I know it's probably not any of my business, but the car, and you look..." She trails here, because there is no way to describe him that meshes with their current tension.

Like hell, Syd. Go ahead and say it.

"The car's on loan." _Don't dig too far, Sydney, unless you want to know the fucked-up truth._ "And I'm fine, but thanks for asking."

"Oh." Quite adept at cramming emotion into that little word. This time, a bit taken aback, and she does not dig any further.

"Sydney, you know I'm here whenever you want to talk." This sounds more sincere, feels more sincere, and he is glad to get it right for once. "But we need to stop having this conversation. I want you to talk to Will, do whatever it takes. I'm going to have a cab waiting at the corner of Alameda and First — 9:30 Monday morning. We'll get Will scheduled with someone, and go from there."

"Okay." Soft, then she stares into him again, and he thinks _maybe_ she knows.

"He will get better, Syd. But you have to let us help him."

"Yeah." Her hands push off of the table and she starts toward the door.

"Is, ah, everything still okay with the mission?"

She turns, eyes smoking brown in the dim light. "It's fine. Thanks, Vaughn."

"Well, then, good luck."

Maybe, he thinks, as he slides from the table to follow her, the conversation went better this time because he feels substantially more neutral on the topic of Will Tippin.

———

Intentionally or not — intentionally, he suspects, because it would not be beyond her — Watkins has removed some of the absurdity from the situation. There are the things — her car, her gun — which must be returned. There is his suit jacket, accidentally left draped over the couch. There is the cane next to it. There is the pain.

And so there is no opportunity to slink off, to chalk it up to a _fuck-tomorrow_ mistake, marked by awkward glances in chaotic hallways. Instead, he will go back, and they will attempt a normal morning after. Which is not ideal, but preferable to slinking, he thinks.

The cane is no longer leaning against the couch when he returns, and a closer inspection finds her missing as well. He starts down the short hallway to her bedroom, wonders briefly how her trip down this path went.

The bedroom door is still white-painted wood, a bit more scuffed than before, and he opens it slowly, listening for the creak. Too much of that, he knows, and the extra Glock on her nightstand will be pointed at him.

The door finally open, he leans against the frame. She has put on a nightgown — red satin, brown hair and pale skin against the white sheets. Calm sleep, a contrast to the newer lines on her face, the ones absent from the last time he walked into this scene. And now he works through other options, namely the couch. Geography, in these hours, is a statement.

Instinct draws him to the bed. To curl up beside her in a time before Sydney.

That name gives him pause. Sydney. He owes her nothing. Nothing since she initiated the stranger's distance. Nothing after he placed emotions out there, so painfully transparent, and watched her walk through that mist, oblivious. He was never in love with her, but there was a time when he allowed himself — _foolishly_ — to consider the possibility. It is enough for a pause, a permanent reflex action.

Settling, perhaps, for less than a standard. Unless waiting for the standard is settling.

He is slow with the buttons on the shirt, dragging his fingers on them. Dragging out the decision, although he knows the answer will be instinct. Shirt, then pants, hands deliberate as he folds them, places them on her dresser.

His fingers curl around the edge of the sheets, and it is now that he ponders the real point of no return. Traces it back, past the sex, past the kiss, past the bar. Maybe this has all been inevitable since he saw her, post-metamorphosis.

She is warm against his chest, beneath his hand, placed carefully above the painful place. One deep breath draws in the familiarity of her hair — mint around his nose, against her neck.

Something, there with him. A lot more than something. It is a welcome change.


	10. 1x9: Filters

Chapter 1.9 — Filters

He wakes to startling, crystal-clear blue. She is lying on her back, head turned toward him.

"I figured you'd be back," she says, and the pure Russian accent hanging from her words surprises him. "I didn't think you'd be back here."

He has only heard this sound a few times from her, usually around her mother, who spoke in a similar voice — one that seemed to mesh well with the fatigue on her face. He has always wondered which is a greater effort for her, the staccato Russian or pure American, and thinks perhaps now he has an answer. Or perhaps the time abroad has shifted things.

He wonders if the slip — if it was a slip — means she is still comfortable around him. Her statement is acknowledged with cautious blinking as he searches for a response. But he finds he has neither a response or a plan here, and eventually reaches out to drag some of the hair out of her eyes.

She mutters something in Russian he does not understand, winces slightly, and rolls away, pushing off with one hand until she is sitting on the edge of the bed.

"You realize this would have to be the mother of all fucking truces," she says, American again, wrapping her fingers around the handle of the cane, which is propped against the nightstand. Her shoulders tense before she stands, and he flips the sheets up quickly, moves around the bed. Starts to wrap an arm around her waist, but she shrugs him off.

"Is this why you came back?" She raps the cane against the nightstand. Doesn't seem to care if it dents the old oak. "Because if it is, I can take care of myself."

This, he thinks, is where having no plan is going to get him into trouble. "It's one of the reasons, yes." His hand still hovers awkwardly at her back.

"One of the reasons." She turns her head, lets him see the quiet, ironic smile. "What are the other reasons?"

He searches now. _Why are you here?_ Two, only, but he thinks they're good enough.

"It feels good to be here. I care about you."

The smile softens at this, but she does not return the sentiment. He does not push it — knows it will be harder for her, and if it comes, it will be at her own pace.

"Just so we've got that clear," she says, stands slowly, and hobbles away from his hand. The door is a harsh click behind her, which brings the full-length mirror into view. A cheap job, K-Mart, he thinks, fake wood borders and sticky squares on the back to hold it to the white door.

A large part of a year, he remembers, in front of a mirror like this. Practicing his English, stressing the American slang that had not been part of French prep curriculum.

He was fourteen and his mother had remarried, an American lawyer and a man he hated because of the space he filled and the change in geography. He understands now, he thinks, what his mother needed. Needed until her hate exceeded his, when it came crashing to a halt with the divorce three years later.

They moved midterm, and suddenly he was a freshman at an American high school, one that caused snickers when he spoke. For much of a year, he talked only out of necessity, and even those sparse words felt out of place — wrong and so horribly different.

And so he practiced, repeated things over and over again until "zis" shifted to "this" and English class became bearable. It left slowly — excruciatingly slow, he thought at the time — until it was gone completely. He reached for it in Algiers and found it wasn't anywhere, that he sounded like a pretending American.

Chris keeps her accent closer, apparently, but he knows they share the time in front of the mirror. Kindergarten, for her, and crying on her way home the first day because she spoke like her mother.

He wonders if the kids are crueller at five or fourteen, knows that they both moved past it eventually. The hockey team sophomore year for him, and friends who quickly forgot that he had been the weird French kid previously. New languages for her — spoken, then programming — and eventually, he suspects, although she has never said specifically, her looks took over.

He stares at the doorknob, not the mirror, as he approaches the door.

———

"Coffee's almost done," she says from the couch as he exits the bathroom. He can smell it, wafting in from the kitchen beyond the living room. The sound is different, he thinks — not the ancient machine that choked and spluttered in protest through every pot. "You mind grabbing me a cup?"

Small steps, he thinks. A small step is grab me a cup of coffee, and maybe I'll let myself need you a little bit more after that.

The coffeemaker is clean, new and efficient, but not enough to break the habit of reaching into the cupboard above it and pulling out two mugs. She calls out when he's finished pouring — black for both of them. "It's theoretically possible there's some bread above the fridge that isn't green."

He smiles, because this is familiar as well. "I'm not hungry, but when you put it that way..." He does not ask if she wants anything — coffee only in the morning for her. Something about no hunger and battery acid for blood.

She stays silent as he hands her one mug. Takes a moment then to contemplate where to sit, find the correct distance. He decides on a few inches away, not touching for now.

Her lips form a soft O as she blows on her coffee to cool it. Four times makes it safe to drink, he learns, and she is halfway through the cup before she speaks again.

"Michael, we can't go back. We're different people."

"I know that."

"I mean it. Maybe we can fuck like seven years hasn't passed, but we can't live that way." _Actually, Chris, last night didn't exactly go like seven years hasn't passed._ "The things I've seen — the things I've done. They're a part of who I am now."

He understands this. It has dominated his thoughts this morning. "I want to know who you are now, Chris. That," he says, pointing to her abdomen. "I want to know about that."

She glances down at her stomach, reaches to her thighs to pull at the nightgown, smoothing the wrinkles.

"I swept yesterday," Explanatory, and he knows there is a small plastic box somewhere in her apartment designed to block surveillance devices, but her voice is still lower when she begins. "There's not a lot to tell. For the last two years, I was with a small cluster of agents in Moscow. We were supposed to find out what the Russians knew about Milo Rambaldi."

His attention sharpens with this, which does not go unnoticed. "Yeah, I know. For two years he's a big priority, and now fifty cents and a Rambaldi invention will get you a cup of coffee. To this day, I'm not completely sure why they had me on it. I always assumed it was because he used binary code in some of his texts. I wasn't exactly complaining — it was definitely cushier than some of my other assignments."

"So what happened?"

"I don't know, exactly. We uncovered the location of a Rambaldi manuscript, and the team was supposed to recover it, but the op was compromised. I remember going in, and then I woke up in an Agency facility in England a week later. Robertson and I are the only ones that made it out."

"Oh." The story is similar to what he has pieced together, but somehow more piercing from the source. "What about, ah, internally?"

She knows him well enough to know the meaning of the question. "Well, I'm short a spleen, and everything else got a little reconfigured in there, but I was lucky. A couple inches to the right and I'd be in a wheelchair."

Now there's something to wrap your mind around. Chris in a wheelchair. There is a certain logic to what bullets do, but he still finds he can't. "What about last night? I mean, is that going to — "

She smiles and shakes her head, grim and knowing. " — stop your fucking worrying, Michael. My physical therapist is probably going to wonder why I had a huge setback, but I'll live."

———

She waits until he delivers her third cup of coffee to drop the question.

"Were you and Sydney Bristow ever together?"

Depends on what you mean by together, Chris. He knows what she means. "No." Not much conviction behind it, and she likely catches this. "Absolutely not. Why do you ask?"

"It's what I've heard," she shrugs. "Plus it's between the lines in a lot of your case files."

Assuming you know what to look for between the lines. She does. "Were you checking up on me?"

"I was checking up on everyone," she says. "Did you know McClure was almost perfect on his SATs?"

"No, I didn't."

"Did you want to be together, you and Bristow?"

Did I want to be together? Did she want to be together? If things were different, would we be together? "It doesn't matter, Chris. There's protocol in that sort of situation."

"I haven't exactly seen protocol stop you here."

"You know that's not the same. This puts our jobs at risk. With Sydney, it's our lives."

"But would you want a relationship with her?"

"Would have, Chris. Not anymore."

"You know, before all the cuts, they would have assigned you boyfriend duty — kept you deep cover, dates as meetings. Better cover, in my opinion. Sometimes obvious works."

Her mug is empty again, but she waves a hand at him when he moves to stand. Reaches back to place it on the table behind her, then focuses fully on him, voice soft when she finally speaks. "I heard about your father, her mother. I know how much you wanted to find out what happened, but that can't be easy."

It was supposed to be easy. We were supposed to ignore it. And it was easy, right up until it got horribly twisted and complicated. "Yeah."

"At least you know."

"Knowing doesn't change anything." He pauses, because the futility of that search is still difficult. "I thought it would, but it doesn't."

She shakes her head slightly, but there is visible strength in the motion. "Knowing is everything, Michael."

A long pause, and he wonders just what she is so adamant about.

"My mom — they didn't tell me until they pulled me off my initial assignment. I didn't know for two years." Something else they share now. Something he finds easy to forget, because it was not part of their old reality.

"You never think — " She turns her head, stares across the living room now, and he knows it is because there are tears forming in her eyes. " — you never think about it. About what happens when you leave. But everything keeps moving."

He can see her control slipping, and the first tear is not a surprise when it slides over her cheek. "I was her life. Everything she did — it was a sacrifice for me. And I wasn't at her fucking funeral. I didn't even know she was dead."

He watches her jaw twitch slightly, and knows this — more so than the night before — is what he has to get right. One hand, cautious at her shoulder. Asking to turn her, and when there is no protest, shifting her body slightly and slipping his hands around to her back. No protest at all, and she leans heavy into the embrace, sobs silent but _there_. His evidence is her chest heaving against his. Maybe she is tired of covering things up, tired of fighting. He knows he is.

Time passes, and he likes that he does not have to care how much, that this is the only place he needs to be. He does not afford her the distance when she starts to pull away, catching the corner of her mouth with his gently. He did get it right, he thinks, because she turns to improve the angle and deepens the kiss. Slow, lingering, and everything tastes of the salt from her eyes.

He still thinks she tastes real.

** [— End Part I —] **


	11. 2x1: Perspective

[— Part II —]

Chapter 2.1 — Perspective

Monday, July 30, 2002

This is the day Michael Vaughn meets Will Tippin. Meets, perhaps, is not the proper word. Rather, he spies him in the hallway, leaving Barnett's office. Vaughn has never met the reporter, but he has collected bits and pieces from Sydney over the past year. And there, stepping into the hallway in baggy khaki pants, and a shirt and jacket that most would interpret as mismatched, must be the whole puzzle.

He watches as Tippin stares in his direction, thinks there should be no reason for recognition — that to Tippin he is just another suit. Then the footsteps behind him come closer, become more distinct, and he realizes Tippin isn't looking at him. The volume of her shoes tells him without looking that she is walking to be seen, because if the need arises, she can be dreadfully stealthy.

Watkins's footwear has tracked the time. Small heels first, then boots, and finally a height that feels right when they kiss. Her body is still lankier than he remembers, but the curves are improving — enough to draw more attention as she walks through the halls here. There are also things casual — and not-so-casual, because she garners both again — observation cannot pick out. She has grown more muscular under his touch, although her stomach remains soft.

Tippin is still observing as she places a hand on his arm and slides around him, smiling a hello. Careful to maintain some distance, the casual co-worker guise, which is something they mastered long ago.

"What's your schedule like tonight?" He thought he would not like the far-shorter hair, but has found it makes her face seem fresher.

"I'm free as of now."

"Good. I need pizza."

He has missed the off path of another agent striding down the hallway, eyes locked on a file folder and headed straight toward Watkins. She has not, however, and she snaps a blunt warning, stepping closer to Vaughn. The agent only brushes her shoulder, but Vaughn checks carefully for pain in her eyes. There is nothing, save perhaps for a brief instance of smolder at the proximity before she steps back.

"Sorry!" The agent calls out, never breaking pace, which is not odd at all. The pace here is still frenetic, the search a seesaw where potential progress always ends with everyone landing back on their asses. From what Vaughn has seen, they are beyond desperation now — approaching a resignation that they will find it when a mushroom cloud makes the location obvious.

Watkins straightens and swings back on the way to her original destination. When he looks back down the hallway, Tippin is gone.

———

Sometimes he thinks the pain is still there. That the new muscles and the tough face are all an act, a way to hide it from him, from the rest of the world. Perhaps even from herself.

Many of the courses they took during agent training were basic. How to shoot, how to fight, proper technique for dead drops and brush passes. Some were a little more unsettling. He recalls specifically an afternoon seminar on interrogation, and a rambling lecture about torture techniques that had almost everyone looking nauseous.

Except, of course, Chris, who sat next to him and stared out on the room, puzzled at their predicament. Finally, she'd lifted her hand, frustrated.

"It's just pain. Either you live or die, and either way it's over eventually."

Torture 101 by Christine Watkins. Sweet and succinct. It was the only useful thing he had taken away from that afternoon, the words he knew he would run in a continuous loop through his head if ever faced with the nausea-inducing things.

There was a logic to the words, to the feeling itself, that was inherently Chris. Too much logic, he'd thought. Too rational for him to understand how she could believe it so resolutely.

That night she sat at her computer desk and ignored him for three hours. Busy typing until he'd offered to work at the substantial knots between her shoulder blades. There was no logic in the moan that rose from her when his hands drifted elsewhere.

———

They only dead drop today, and Sydney is fifty feet away, exiting the park, when he arrives and sits on the bench. Previously, he might have wished they could stop and talk — ask her about Will and Francie, her classes, her father. Lately, there has only been one question — "How's Will?" — and he gets reports to answer that one now.

He makes one final, deliberate scan — eyes only, no telltale turning of his head — of the park in front of him. Nothing, and so he reaches underneath the bench and, in one motion, detaches the cardboard tube taped there, pulling it into his lap.

Inside, he knows, is the original version of the Rambaldi manuscript, recovered two days ago in Germany. The lab that held it is now a pile of rubble and cinders, and SD-6 considers the remains of the document a part of the ashes. He considers briefly — then pushes it away — that both of them nearly died because of the parchment inside the tube.

Vaughn does wish he could congratulate her. Suspicion is strong — although the CIA still lacks the resources for intel to support it — that Irina Derevko has been able to regroup and is again working on Rambaldi's Circumference. The last thing the SD-6 team wants is their target doing the same.

Praise for good work aside, Vaughn has been largely indifferent about meeting with Sydney of late. Occasionally, he misses the connection they had — or at least the one he thinks they had — before they both trenched back into their own worlds. She does not know that things have changed with Chris. No one does — unwritten rule — but he thinks she suspects something.

He has found this pleases him. Not because of anger or jealousy — although those were strong in the beginning. It pleases him because they meet now and he feels some semblance of control over the situation. His relationship with Chris is still tenuous, occasionally strained — the old words they ignore most of the time still _somewhere_ down there, a lingering current of unease. But she has changed things in him, changed his perspective, and that has changed everything.

His briefcase today is a soft-sided leather thing, important for what he needs to do next. Smooth and rapid, he slides at the zipper to make an opening just large enough for the tube, then slips it inside. He closes the zipper as he stands, then walks away, pace and demeanor that of a businessman here on a lunch break.

———

They spent part of the weekend at the beach — her suggestion. Watkins in a solid black swimsuit that covered the pink line on her stomach, and somehow he found that change more jarring than the lines on her face, the pants and the short shoes.

Too hot, too crowded, she said, and suggested they swim. Then a quick realization on her face, an apology, and she told him she would understand if he didn't want to. He thought about explaining it to her — that it wasn't really fear, merely a lack of desire to feel the water around him. To remember Taipei and how drastically things changed after it. Instead he shrugged his shoulders and stood with her, followed her to the waterline. And he did hesitate when his feet crossed the border between wet sand and dry, but it had nothing to do with recent memories.

He was six when his father took him the first time. A little strange, he thinks, because Fleury was so close to the beaches steeped in history. Perhaps he was too young, or perhaps his father just wasn't around, not available even to take him to the place that defined Normandy for the rest of the world.

Omaha was closest, and it was not until later that he realized his father had specifically selected one of the American beaches. That was long before he began to consider what it was to be American. What it was to be his father.

He remembers most the demeanor of the adults. That he became solemn, reverent — or as close as a six-year-old can get to these — because of them. He still did not understand the gray-haired man in American tourist clothing, who kneeled down in the wet sand just before the waves and stared at it, unmoving for a very long time.

Vaughn grasped his father's hand and listened as he talked about hedgerows and bunkers and LSTs, but his focus was on the American man. Eventually, the man's hands slowly descended to the sand, resting there before he stood and walked away, a confusing silhouette against the rough waves. The imprints were still there when a slight tug at his hand told him it was time to move further down the beach.

He returned at 12 and thinks it was the first time he truly wanted his father's job.

———

They have been here many times before, but not in this incarnation. Dark brick walls and dim, low-slung lights, but it is still enough to see her work quickly through three slices of pizza. She refuses a fourth, however.

"That's enough for one night. I've got firearms cert this week, and then full conditioning next. That's going to be a real bitch."

He watches her for a moment with this, waits until her eyes shift from her beer to his. A question he thinks he already knows the answer to. "They're working you awfully hard for a desk jockey, aren't they?"

Her eyes drift back to the beer. "Not a desk jockey. I want to get back into field shape."

This is starting to sound too damn familiar. "Shit, Chris. You can't honestly be planning to go back out. Look at what happened to you." _And what about us?_

She seems to know the question he doesn't ask. "I asked to go back into training as soon as I got back, Michael. They're not going to send me anywhere." She grins and meets his eyes again, a faint glow on the blue. "I'm too old and broken-down."

The humor is meant to deflect, but he does not let it. "What if they did, Chris? Damn it, I'm not going to go through that again."

The force of his words seems to startle her. "Michael, I need to do this. I need to get back to where I was. The odds of them sending me anywhere are — "

" — I don't care about the odds, Chris. I don't want to be here if there are _any_ odds."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means I can't fall in love with you again and watch you leave for another seven years. It means I can't wait around to find out that whoever shot you this time had better aim."

"You're assuming this is going to last."

"No, Chris. I'm telling you it can't last with that hanging over us. You said last time you didn't have a choice. You do now, don't you?"

She nods slightly, but there is a stagnant pause before she speaks, and he fears this is when it will all crumble again.

"I asked to go back into the field because I didn't have anything important here in L.A. Anyone important." She runs her hand across the table, sliding her fingers gently over his. "If it means that much to you, I'll tell them I changed my mind."

"Thank you."

"You know as long as we're both with the Agency, this can't go anywhere — things will never progress. And I don't know about you, but I don't plan on leaving any time soon."

You'll never have the white picket fence, Michael.

"It doesn't matter," he tells her, and means it fully. Her hand becomes tighter, warmer around his.

There is nothing ominous about the gesture, nothing strange about her tenderness that night. There is nothing to suggest that this is the day before everything falls apart. This is the day before it all begins to unravel.


	12. 2x2: To Belong

Chapter 2.2 — To Belong

Tuesday, July 31, 2002

As is often the case with these things, weeks of legwork eventually boil down to someone having the right source. In this case, it is Jack Bristow.

Weiss is waiting outside Vaughn's office with this news when he arrives. Standing there, a little shifty and uncomfortable, but this is the state of things between them.

"I just talked to Kretchmer. Jack Bristow got some intel that Derevko moved her work on the Circumference to a site in Russia. Somewhere outside St. Petersburg," he says, tentatively following Vaughn in when he opens the door. "Have you seen Watkins?"

"No." Vaughn's response is partially true. He has not seen Watkins in this building, or under the pretense of work, yet today. He does, however, know she intended to leave his apartment about five minutes after him, to avoid the suspicion of a simultaneous arrival.

"We're still trying to narrow it down to a more specific location. Kretchmer wants her to look at some aerials. Do you know if she spent any time in St. Petersburg?"

"No, I don't." _Seven months, and she said it was beautiful._

"Well, tell her if you see her."

"See who?" She barges in again, acknowledging him only with a furtive flick of her eyes. "Morning, Agent Weiss. Agent Vaughn."

"You," Weiss says. "Kretchmer's looking for you — "

"— to give me these — " she holds up a stack of manila envelopes " — I talked to him already. Although I'm pretty sure we're going to need more to go on. I can't pinpoint a location out of thin air. I'll be in op-tech if anyone needs me," she adds, with a pointed glance at Vaughn.

Meet me in the op-tech room, then. He wonders if Weiss catches it, if he notices the new differences between their interactions — the ones they have tried to keep subtle. If Weiss sees that he tenses when she calls him "Michael," before he remembers she called him that before everything changed. There was a time when Weiss would have guessed, when Vaughn would have told him, but that has changed as well.

They both exit his office silently.

———

She has cleared one of the op-tech tables and covered it with large, glossy satellite images when he enters the room, twenty minutes later. Picking carefully through the mess, which seems worse today. More people in the room to crowd it, as well, although the pace here is studious, deliberate — unlike the rest of the building. None of the men are cliché enough for things like pocket protectors, but they also don't look like the suits elsewhere.

It is here that she stands out, where she should fit in. Wary, attractive, graceful, self-aware. Like they had placed a tiger in the same room with a bunch of kittens and expected them to get along because of some common ancestry.

She doesn't belong anywhere in this building. She belongs out there, in the field.

He corrects himself. _She belongs wherever she wants to belong. She belongs with you._

"Hey," she says, as he finally clears the last lump of wires between them. "Analysis kindly narrowed it down to about fifty possible sites for me. I don't even know why Kretchmer bothered with the request," she says. "It looks like they spent all of five minutes on it."

"Did you need something from me?"

"I could use another set of eyes, if you're not busy." He was afraid of this. She is smooth in working with him, being around him here, and usually the one to initiate a project together. Vaughn can maintain the proper appearances, but it is more of an effort for him — maintaining focus when she is close. This does not stop him from grabbing a worn gray-cloth chair and rolling it to a spot beside hers.

"I don't think we're going to be able to come up with anything without something more specific from Jack Bristow," she says as he sits. "And it's not like this is a real forte for either of us. But I guess you never know."

Logic, her forte, and she suggests they start with the obvious — places that have not seen enough traffic, buildings that are too small. They sit silently, picking through the images, and he forces himself to focus on them — not that she is near. The task is fairly simple, moving in close to check each image for signs of activity in each, sliding most of them, after careful study, to their impromptu "No" pile. They are pleased, when the initial elimination is done, to discover that this pile encompasses most of the images.

Six left, and now they pick at them — leaning, reaching, pointing — making a case for each. And eventually, there is one, the one they have been gravitating toward, even while arguing for the others. A tricky commitment, to make this _the one_, but neither can find fault with it.

"About 20 miles out of the city. That would make sense," she says. "You would want it close enough for transportation, men, supplies. Far enough away to keep everything quiet."

"And the building is large enough to hold a model." he says. "We can pull old images to cross-check. The activity should have picked up after the other model was destroyed."

"That's possible," she says. "But it could also be a mirror site, so that wouldn't rule it out even if there was substantial traffic before. I think this is it, Michael."

"Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not sure. It could be one of the other ones. It could be something that's not even in this pile." She swings her arm over the other images. "There could be no model outside St. Petersburg. But this one does stand out. It's worth sending a team in to scope it out."

He smiles at her, thinks they work well together. _She does belong with you._

"Then let's do it."

———

A quick check of older imagery finds that activity at the site spiked shortly after Sydney Bristow destroyed the Circumference model in Taipei, further support for their choice. And so Vaughn and Watkins run the location past Kretchmer, who gives them a gruff "good work," and agrees that they should request a team.

Few people in the Agency's L.A. headquarters have Bill Devlin's ear. Kretchmer is one, Jack Bristow another, and up until recently, this has helped the SD-6 team stay rich in resources. They have deferred to the nuke, outwardly understanding — although often grumbling amongst themselves — and have not requested any major operations in the last few months.

They deserved one, Vaughn thought, as did Kretchmer and Watkins. Which is why he is surprised when Devlin calls him into his office an hour after they make the request.

"Kretchmer is out of the office," Devlin says. "Have a seat." Which he knows is never good, but Vaughn sits anyway. "I'm sorry, but we just can't spare the manpower for a team right now."

Vaughn takes a moment to let this sit, formulate his argument. "Sir, I understand the weight of...current situations, and that everything is tight. But we have been patient, and careful not to make extraneous requests, and I would encourage you to reconsider — "

" — Agent Vaughn, we think the nuke may have crossed over onto American soil. I would have approved a team otherwise." _And your argument is now completely moot._

But he recalls hearing that rumor — the nuke in the country — about a week ago, and that it proved to be false later. Feels somewhat guilty about it, but he makes one last attempt.

"I know that all this Rambaldi stuff might be nonsense, sir, but it was a pretty big priority for us and a lot of other people not too long ago. And on the off chance that this Circumference really is destructive, that Rambaldi was onto something, I think we need to at least minimally investigate this."

Devlin gives him a long pause before speaking again. _You know, just once, you could say something that isn't going to put your job in danger._

"I'll authorize an operation, Agent Vaughn, but I can't give you any men. You're on your own there."

———

"So what did Kretchmer say?" Watkins asks him. They are in his office with the door shut, but the talk today is all business.

"He was none too happy. He's going to talk to Jack, have him leak it back to SD-6 in the hopes that they send Sydney and Dixon after it."

"That's a little risky, isn't it?"

"We don't have a whole lot of other choices, Chris."

"I know." She shakes her head, and releases a little exasperation. "We're still going to need more people, especially since we're going in nearly blind. I'd love some intel beyond sat images, but just looking at this I'd want at least three teams of two."

She stops for a moment, looks at him to check comprehension. "Based on the traffic patterns, I think you've got entrances on the north and east sides, so we need a team on each."

"Not a whole lot of guards."

"No," she says. "They probably want to keep it quiet. But we should keep some people on the perimeter, especially the access road. I'm assuming we have Bristow and Dixon. Without them, I don't think we're going to be able to go with this. Then there's you, and me — "

Me is not something he has thought about, until now. " — are you sure you're ready, Chris?"

"I'm ready, Michael. I wouldn't have included myself if I wasn't. And you're going to need me."

She's right, he realizes. They will need her for experience, for her fluency in the language, for her skill in accessing anything computerized they may encounter. He still does not want her to go. Doesn't want to go himself. _You want her here, home, safe. With you. Not out there where she can get a taste of what she used to be._

"So," she says, and he knows the subject is closed. "We need two more."

"You won't have to ask McClure twice. He'll see this as his ticket out there."

Something passes through her eyes briefly, and he wonders if she's ever wanted to pull McClure aside. Tell him he shouldn't be so eager. "One more, then. Weiss?"

Of course it comes down to Weiss. "I don't know, Chris. I really don't know."

———

Kretchmer is ten minutes late to their meeting that afternoon, following his own attempt to convince Devlin of their need for a proper team. He enters the small conference room quietly, and shakes his head at Vaughn, who has been detailing the situation to the rest of the group.

"Okay, then," Vaughn says, as Kretchmer takes his usual seat. "If we're going to do this, it's just us. We already have Agents Bristow, Dixon, Watkins and myself. We'll need at least two more people in on the op."

McClure, as expected, is quick to speak. "I'm in," he says, fighting a grin, tone cocky, and it reminds Vaughn of old Chris. "Whatever you need."

Five was easy. The hard part is six. He briefly catches Kretchmer's eyes, and understands — hadn't really considered him an option. Maybe long ago. No kids, but Kretchmer does have a wife. Not too far away from his pension and a less-worried wife. Too much to risk. _But you have something to risk now, too._

Robertson speaks next. An option, but one Vaughn knows Watkins would rather not have to deal with. "Are you all crazy? Half of you don't have any field experience — " Vaughn does, but it is not enough to interject " — and she's not ready to go back out." He glares at Watkins from across the table.

Vaughn is seated next to her, and can't see the look in her eyes. But he can guess the expression from the tone of her voice. "I've been cleared medically. I'm ready."

"Like you were ready for that last op, Watkins?"

She tenses slightly beside him with this. "Nobody was ready for what happened there." She pauses. "Devlin cleared this. If you don't like it — if you want to sit on your ass while we try to make some progress, fine. But let us plan the operation."

A lengthy silence follows her statement. _We still need six._ And they are back to the original option, Weiss, who has been quiet — contemplative, Vaughn hopes — through all of this. _He says no, you stay here. She stays here. But this is important. It's the right thing to do._ He forces himself to look across the table, catch Weiss with his eyes. _Maybe there's no hope, but just give me this one. Please._

"I'll do it."


	13. 2x3: Trust in Transition

Chapter 2.3 — Trust in Transition

He rarely meets with both of them, but nothing about this mission is typical. Dixon arrives first, steps slow and deliberate across the concrete, face wary when he finally reaches the fence and pulls it open. It clacks, catching for a moment, before he walks in with a gruff "hello." These are the only sounds he makes until Sydney arrives, blustering an apology about school.

"Thesis?" This from Dixon, and she smiles and nods. Vaughn realizes he envies both sides of the exchange. Sydney, for drawing friendliness — _trust_ — from Dixon. And Dixon for knowing what to ask about. 

You're here for business now. He pulls two manila envelopes from the table beside him, hands one to each.

"These are mission specs, based on what we have. Agent Watkins drew up most of the op." Dixon remains characteristically stoic, but he thinks Sydney's face darkens with the name. "You two will take the north entrance. Chris and I will take the east."

Skill level and field experience would dictate that they split Sydney and Dixon onto two separate teams, he knows. But these pairings are based on trust.

"At minimum, we're doing recon here," he continues. "If either team finds any Rambaldi artifacts, they are to recover them. We'll decide what to do with them at the rendezvous point. If you encounter a Circumference model, you should destroy it, but make sure you clear it with the other team on comms first."

We've learned that lesson the hard way. He catches the sharp glance Sydney gives him. _Not your fault, Syd. That was a poorly planned mess._ Destined to end badly, he thinks, and hopes this is not the same.

"Is that everything?" Dixon asks.

"Yes. We're set to go at midnight Friday. Moscow time. Everything else is in there." _Now go ahead home to the wife and kids. _"Sydney, if you could, stick around for a second."

Dixon smiles goodbye to Sydney, says goodbye to Vaughn, and exits quickly.

"What do you want?" she asks, eyes curious, after the closing pop of the metal door reverberates through the warehouse.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay with everything, given that it's..." He trails, uncertain of how to word this.

"My mother?" Still a rough topic, he sees. "Vaughn, it's fine." He expects a reassuring smile, or whatever along those lines she can muster, but gets a frown instead. "No. It's not fine."

"Your mother?"

"No." She stares at him sharply, as if something should be obvious. "Agent Watkins. Vaughn, I know you two were close, and I'm sorry, but I just don't trust her."

This surprises him. He had expected something along these lines — a veiled probe at their relationship, perhaps — but not this. "Syd, I trust her." _More than anyone, anymore._

"You _trusted_ her. But Vaughn, how long has she been gone?"

"Seven years." _But sometimes it feels like never._

"A lot can change in seven years, Vaughn. You're back together, aren't you?" Quiet, but accusatory somewhere deep beneath.

"How did you — "

" — you're different." She does not say how. He knows it has something to do with a lighter demeanor, less interest in her. Her voice is soft when she speaks again. "It's dangerous to try to pick something like that up where you left off. Look at what happened with Noah."

"That's completely different, Sydney. I'm telling you — I know Chris, and I trust her."

"I trusted Noah, too, Vaughn, and look at what happened." Her voice grows louder with this.

"The fact that your boyfriend was an assassin has nothing to do with Chris." Something from the current of his unconscious. The words are out before he can think of them — filter them — but he finds he has grown impatient. _Defensive. _

And they hurt. Her eyes turn glassy, then cold. "You can believe whatever you want. But this is my ass on the line, too. So don't tell me who to trust, Vaughn."

"What do you want me to say, Sydney? We need her on this op."

"There's a lot you can say, Vaughn." Even sharper, and the fluorescent lights glitter off her eyes. "What happened to hockey games? What happened to Traetorria di Nardi?"

So this is about more than just trust, Sydney. "You took all that off the table. You know that." If they are going to throw this out in the open and beat it about, he realizes he does not want anything left unsaid. "You took up with an old flame. I understand that, completely. But you went first. Did you think I was going to stand around and wait while you went off with Noah Hicks? You changed the rules, Sydney."

"Bullshit, Vaughn. That's bullshit and you know it." She seethes, eyes boring into him, and he wonders why they didn't do this a long time ago. _Refreshing, true feelings._ "You mean to tell me if Chris came back before Noah, nothing would have happened between you?"

Good point, Syd, but it's still different, somehow. "I'm saying I would have at least had the courtesy to discuss it with you, Sydney. To ask you whether or not you were willing to wait. And it's not like this matters at all, what, with Will now."

This surprises her, and she looks at him sharply, brows sliding closer together. "What about Will?"

What about Will? You're fucking him, that's what about Will. He says nothing, but thinks surely she can see the meaning on his face.

"Vaughn, Will and I aren't — we were never romantically involved. Especially not now." Her eyes flash frustration now. "I moved in with him because he needed someone there who understands what he went through. And I'm the only one who even knows, besides my dad. But there's nothing — how could you possibly think there was anything going on between us?"

"It's easy Sydney. It's easy when all you tell me is you're moving in with him. Which is more than you told me about Noah."

"I don't exactly see you volunteering any information about Chris. Stop being such a fucking hypocrite, Vaughn. You want to screw her, fine. But don't make it my fault. And don't expect me to trust her."

With that, she whirls away, yanking at the fence gate until it rattles open. Loud, as are her boots on the floor, stomping toward the door.

He goes back to what she said about Will. Examines what it means. 

This changes everything. It changes nothing.

———

The other thoughts do not creep in until later, as he is driving away. But they are powerful when they finally arrive — pulsating in his mind until he can no longer push them away. He has based everything on old trust.

A lot can change in seven years, Vaughn.

Doubts now. That too much of her last operation is unexplained. That all he knows is what she has told him.

Robertson and I are the only ones that made it out.

He has considered many things since her return. Old words. Inter-office relationships. Truces. The changes in her. The changes in him. 

I was checking up on everyone.

A u-turn is tempting, but he forces himself to wait. Finds a parking lot — a squatty, run-down grocery store thing, full of lumps and potholes — to turn around, back to headquarters.

Khasinau. Derevko. Russia.

It never occurred to him not to trust her.

———

He hates that Sydney might be right. He hates himself for doing this. He hates that it feels necessary all of a sudden.

There are far more workers in the office than is par for the middle of the evening, but par has increased as of late. Vaughn finds the bustle is actually preferable to what he needs to do, less noticeable as he runs a keycard through the slot outside a large white metal door and waits for it to slide open. The records room is empty, save for a sea of plastic beige file cabinets. This is also preferable. 

Technically, there is nothing wrong with what he is about to do. He should be cleared to read most of her operations; minimal portions of her personnel file are open to any agent. Rather, it is a betrayal of trust.

There is no trust. She did the same to you.

Convenient, he thinks, that they are on the same end of the alphabet. Pulls "Robertson, Scott" and "Watkins, Christine," then walks back to his office. Closes the door but leaves the blinds open, and sets them on his desk. Watkins first, and he stares at it for a moment, her name flowing in and out of focus, before finally turning the corner.

The picture is old, from when she first joined the Agency. Hair lighter, fewer lines and a bright smile. A shocking reminder — catalyst to the comparisons he has been trying to avoid. The eyes are the bridge, still the same intensity. He moves on to her vitals, and nothing there is a surprise. 

The first of those comes with her family. Her father, located and interviewed for her initial background check. He wonders if she knows about this — if she included her own file in her examination of the rest of the team. Her mother, Mila Kozlova, not a surprise at all, although he has not heard her last name in a long time. To him, she has always been Mila.

Vaughn turns the page to her early missions, cataloged with tight, uncomfortable printing that grows loose by the end of each account. He knows automatically that she would have preferred to type them, wonders why they don't in this day and age.

The early missions are all successes, which he has always assumed. She is good, something he knew almost instinctively, back in the early days of classes and training. _Alive now means good, if you're Chris. Or it means something else._

The words on the next page are no more tight or loose than the others, but they stand out instantly: "We needed the intel, and I saw an opportunity."

Vaughn flips the page quickly. Potential fuel for his doubts, he thinks, will never outweigh his desire to keep that particular detail of her past buried. _ She is sincere. Her emotions are sincere. They have to be. She did that. She did that because her team, her country needed the information. How could she do that and not be working for your side?_

Things go badly, you might push her triple.

Her final report is nearly as vague as her explanation to him, and he closes the file feeling no reassurance.

Robertson next, a twenty-year veteran of the Agency, according to the first page. Vaughn realizes he had hoped for something a little less trustworthy. _ An asshole, but also a company man._

He skims Robertson's earlier cases, looking for her name. A little shocked, when he finally finds it, to see that Robertson liked her, respected her in the beginning. And continued to, he reads, through operation after operation — the same successes detailed by Watkins. 

Then Vaughn flips a page, and the tone changes abruptly. Here, again, is the mission he would prefer to skip. But one word — "rogue" — stands out to him, and finds he can't look away from the text.

Agent Christine Watkins acted without authorization or permission in meeting with one Anatoliy Semenov, suspected agent of The Man. Agent Watkins was out of contact for more than two days, considered rogue. Returned stating she had extracted the existence of a Rambaldi manuscript and access codes to said manuscript. Means of operation: swallow. Would recommend removal from current assignment and reexamination of agent's status. We do not intend to move on the Rambaldi manuscript until we can ascertain a location.

Vaughn knows he will hate reading her side of the story, but he needs it now. He pushes Robertson's folder aside and flips hers back open, fingers skimming through the pages until he reaches the one he skipped. 

Anatoliy Semenov was believed to be involved in illicit weapons acquisition for The Man, which I now know to be true. The team had been hearing rumors for weeks regarding The Man's attempts to purchase or build weapons of mass destruction, but had nothing substantial. I sighted Semenov entering a Moscow nightclub on the night of April 10, 2002. We needed the intel, and I saw an opportunity, so I followed him.

Vaughn wonders what her intentions were then. If she had the ending planned when she walked in. With Semenov. With him.

I did not have time to contact Agent Robertson or another member of the team for authorization. Semenov seemed to show an interest in me, and eventually approached me. He purchased three drinks for me and asked if I would like to accompany him to his hotel room. Once there, we had sex. 

The logic, again. It makes him feel like flinging the folder across his office. The factual, step-by-step recounting of the events that led to her pain._ Once there, we had sex. Shit, Chris._

After he fell asleep, I picked the lock to his briefcase. It contained a number of plans and specs for Russian missiles, but I was already familiar with these. There was also a communication referencing a Milo Rambaldi document, and a series of access codes. I memorized the codes and left in the morning. There is no reason to suspect that Semenov was aware that I accessed his briefcase, or that he knew I worked in intelligence.

Quietly, gently, he closes her file, and wishes he had never opened it. Wishes he had never come here. But he is too deep into the task to leave it incomplete. He reopens Robertson's folder and flips to the back of the file, to the last statement — his remaining curiosity.

And Robertson's coverage of their last operation is much more detailed, objective. Another team member was able to uncover the location of the Rambaldi manuscript, and the team — three men plus Watkins — went in to retrieve it. Robertson, he reads, worked comms in a van outside. And heard it all go wrong, quickly. Shots over the lines, and all three men unresponsive. Watkins — barely so — but she managed to stagger out to the van before she passed out.

So, he thinks, Robertson never really went into what turned out to be a bloodbath. _You don't see him walking around with his guts sewn in._

And nobody but Chris knows what happens in there. She says she can't remember. She's the one that got shot. _A couple inches to the right and I'd be in a wheelchair. You don't see her in a wheelchair, do you?_

Robertson's conclusions, now, and they are simple. Operation compromised by an unknown agent.

William C. Vaughn. Wife, Marie. Son, Michael. Assassinated by an unknown agent. oh god.

Maybe, he thinks, nothing pushed her to the other side. Maybe she has been there all along.

The image — which has reemerged with her report — shifts in his mind. It is no longer submissive Chris with the bald Russian programmer. _Chris, screwing her contact, Anatoliy Semenov, an attractive young Russian. Naked bodies writhing on the bed and she's moaning. Enjoying it as much as she enjoys it with you._

How far back could it go? Perhaps, he thinks, beyond old Chris. Perhaps back to Mila — sweet, overworked Mila Kozlova. _The obvious choice because she's not obvious._ Not Mila, he thinks, she couldn't —

Mila died in a car accident. Sydney's mother died in a car accident. _ And Jack Bristow trusted his wife._

This is when his cell phone rings. A burst of heat under his collar, because he is fairly certain he knows who the caller is.

"Where the hell are you?" His guess is correct, and Watkins is angry. "Is everything okay?"

"Hey. Everything's fine — " _Everything is not fine. Everything is terribly wrong and fucked-up, and you're going to have to go home to her and pretend it's not. And you're not nearly as good at lying as her, regardless of her allegiances._ "I'm sorry — I should have called." He is sorry for other things, especially the files in his hands, but he does not ever intend to mention those. "I went back to the office and got tied up in something. I'm on my way out now."

"Shit, Michael. You know, next time, you might try calling. I'll see you in a little bit."

Vaughn returns the files to the records room, plastic cabinet doors rolling smoothly back into place. He checks one thing before leaving.

There is no file on Mila Kozlova.

———

She is lying in bed when he returns — booked on an earlier flight — but not yet asleep. Vaughn feels strange, slipping beneath the sheets with her, draping an arm over her stomach. Pretending his mind is not full of images and doubts.

"Hey," she says, voice concerned — _or is it?_ "I was worried about you." She shuffles under the covers, turning to face him. "You sure everything's okay? Most people don't get tied up in paperwork the night before they have to fly halfway around the world for a mission."

"Everything's fine, Chris." 

"You don't sound like it's fine." She slips a hand around to his back, drawing him closer. He thinks it is supposed to be reassuring, comforting.

"Chris, can I ask you something? The Agency — why did you join?" The question his mind conjured during the drive here. And he should have known the answer, should have picked it up somewhere along the line. But somehow he has missed them — either the question, or the answer. Perhaps both.

"That's a pretty deep question for this time of night." The light from the window is dim, but enough for her to study his face. "I thought about the things my mother went through, why she came here. And they did a pretty good job of convincing me that my skill set was — I think the term was 'desperately needed.' I don't know. It seemed like the right thing to do." 

She smiles, but most of it is pain. "I thought at first my mother would be angry. Want me to work for some capitalist software company and make a bunch of money. But she wasn't. She said the important thing was that I could do whatever I wanted to do."

Her hand slips from his back, but she waits another minute before speaking. "You pulled my file, didn't you?"

He had thought he was less transparent. _Apparently not._ "Sydney — she doesn't trust you."

"I wouldn't trust me either, if I was her." He waits for her to ask the question. _Do you trust me?_ He has no answer, and perhaps she can see this. "Trust is intellectual, Michael. Think about it. I'm not a hundred percent, we both know that. And our team isn't exactly ripe in field experience. I'll let you figure out why I'm going."

This helps, begins to quell the storm in his head, but it is not nearly enough.


	14. 2x4: Skeleton

Chapter 2.4 — Skeleton

Friday, August 2, 2002

St. Petersburg is more uniform than Los Angeles, but there is one area of the latter's sprawl — the old downtown — that resembles the Russian city. Both locales share aging buildings with intricate facades — a complexity and character absent from more modern structures. 

The old downtown of Los Angeles is beginning to submit to the crumble — abandoned for higher, shinier and newer. In St. Petersburg, however, the old is still very much the center. Baroque grandeur comprises the most impressive buildings — arches, pillars, columns, and the spires for which it is famous.

Beneath the opulence of its architecture, however, St. Petersburg has changed drastically — a city still in the midst of upheaval and transition. Streets and bridges have seen their titles shift from Soviet labels to older names. The city, itself, back to St. Petersburg after decades as Leningrad. Shifting, dynamic, and somehow still grand.

Vaughn sees none of this when he arrives at Pulkovo II, only a mass of people and the fewest frills of any airport thus far. He is stiff and tired, coming off 20 hours of planes and blue vinyl airport seats — security checks he can't credential his way out of, because he is not traveling as Michael Vaughn today. David Wilson, instead, and a new passport and visa that became less new-looking after he dumped half a cup of coffee on them 26 hours ago.

His itinerary from here is specific, and a bit nerve-wracking, based on a series of instructions and phrases drilled into him by Watkins. If any of them go wrong — _or God forbid you forget them_ — he will have to break cover and go tourist. _You could always fall back on your extensive knowledge of Russian swear words, courtesy Chris. Those should get you real far. _

Crammed onto a mini-bus first, struggling to maintain control of his small carry-on. A long half-hour into the city, an elderly woman and an almost-sympathetic businessman elbowing him alternately through the turns. Summer here has translated into a gray sky, almost chilly, but he is thankful for this — does not want to think about traveling in these conditions in the heat of L.A. His stop, then, a metro station — Moskovskaya — and apparently the stop of most of the rest of the bus. They jostle out, more elbows and a few feet on his own, all toward the entrance.

Vaughn stays with the crowd — the whole point of this exercise — through the entrance, then leaves long enough to buy a few tokens. Merges again with them to descend the lengthy escalator, furtively checking his surroundings, standing to the right because this is what everyone seems to be doing. Realizing why when two young women sprint down the left side.

The end of the escalator brings a well-lit curve sided with faux marble-tiled walls. It bustles around him, and he is hyperaware — watching, feeling, listening — as he walks toward the train. Her approach is still a surprise — appearance nondescript, clothing tweaked slightly to blend, even her gait set to match the crowd.

Her shoulder brushes against his arm, the only announcement of her arrival, and they step together onto the next train. Sit separately, but close enough not to lose each other. She stands first at their stop, and he follows, lets the crowd swarm around them as they step away from the train. Then back together, appearance that of a couple now, although he is still following her lead. Dependent on her, he thinks, and he does not want to be, but it would be even harder to be here alone.

The city is every bit as beautiful as she promised, but Vaughn is careful to keep his observation surreptitious. Barely sweeping the buildings, the people, with his eyes — and focused mostly on not losing her among them. No telltale tourist gawking here.

The CIA's safehouse in this part of the city is not a house at all, he learns, but rather a small apartment two blocks away from their metro stop. She does not speak English until he closes the door behind them, and even then her accent is thick Russian.

"It looks like shit, but there's active countersurveillance, so we can speak." She motions for him to set his bag next to an ancient brown couch, one of the few pieces of furniture in the place. A cursory glance reveals peeling green paint on the walls, a kitchen full of decades-old appliances, and a series of locked cabinets along the far wall. The cabinets, he knows, are the apartment's true purpose.

He sits on the near end of the couch — finds it feels as uncomfortable as it looks — as she walks into the kitchen. "I bought food this morning, if you're hungry."

"No thanks. Maybe later," because his stomach is churning too much.

The faucet rattles, spurts and finally whooshes, as she pours a glass of water. She returns, sipping it, and claims the opposite end of the couch. "How was your flight?"

He hates the accent, he realizes. It bothers him. It makes him want to grab her. Shake her shoulders. Ask her what side she's really on. Because he has had 20 hours of planes and airports to let the details of her file torment him.

"Too long," he replies. "I don't know how you handle it."

"Sydney's the frequent flier, not me," she says. "I've only done it twice before. Going and coming, and I don't remember much of the flight back. They had me pretty well drugged up." She grins, takes a sip of water.

"At least you spoke the language when you got here."

"This is true. Did you have any trouble with my directions?"

"No, but it was a little nerve-wracking," he admits.

"I can imagine. But you're here now." _Yes, Chris. I'm here now, in a safehouse halfway around the world, in a country where I can't speak the fucking language, about to go on a blind mission. All with a woman I can't be sure isn't the enemy._

Vaughn wants to begin to broach this, to see if he can quiz her, come up with enough correct answers to trust her. But she speaks first. "I want you to answer your own question, Michael. Why did you join? Why are you here?"

The abruptness startles him, and he considers asking her where the questions came from. Why she feels the need to ask them here, now. Then realizes he knows — that he is not the only one who sat and stared out a plane window. Thinking, scrutinizing, coming up with new questions.

His answer to the first one comes quickly, because it is obvious._ It's always been obvious._ "You know why I joined. And I'm here because this mission is important."

"That's not what I meant, Michael. Why did you go to Taipei? I used to think it was Bristow. I thought maybe you were in love with her, but I'm not so sure, now."

"I got tired of blindly following protocol, Chris. I got tired of putting the job first."

"Are you insane? You went rogue and almost got killed trying to save a civilian."

And there is his opening. "You went rogue, too, Chris."

She stares at him with this, eyes glowering. _Yes, Chris, I read that, and I wish I hadn't. But I did._ "That was different. That was looking at the big picture."

"How was Taipei not looking at the big picture?"

"That was putting the people before the picture, Michael. You can tell the job to fuck off, but you can't ever abandon the big picture." She frowns. "You told me you came in to be some big patriot, fight the good fight, like your father. But you haven't been there — not in a long time. Maybe not ever."

Bullseye, Chris.

She continues. "I know you have doubts about me. I have a lot of doubts about that operation myself. But you have to know that I'm here for the right reasons." Her eyes bore into his — sincere, he thinks — for a moment. "They ask you, after you complete field training. They call you in and ask you. How far you're willing to go for your country — although that's not quite how they word it."

He's heard rumors about this, and always dismissed them because they had never asked him. _So maybe they only asked the field agents, not the desk jockeys._ "What did you say?"

"I told them I'd do anything, but there had to be a point. That I didn't want to die because some bureaucrat got a bright idea. They cleared me for field duty, so I guess that was a good enough answer. I didn't figure it out, didn't realize until after my last op that it was wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"You rarely know, in the middle of it, just how important something is. This Rambaldi stuff — nobody knows whether it's bullshit. You just do the job and hope our side stays ahead."

"How do you do it, though, Chris? How do you stay dedicated to the job?"

"You don't stay dedicated to the job. You stay dedicated to — "

" — the big picture?"

She smiles. "Exactly." And it is here, he realizes, on this lumpy brown couch in a place where they have no history, that she reminds him most of old Chris. Idealistic somewhere beneath all the experience, still full of cool competence. 

But this does not calm him, nor do her comments, and now he begins to examine his own motivations. Her smile fades as vague worry takes over, and he wonders if she is plagued with doubts as well — doubts about him. "We should get some sleep. We've got a long hike later."

She sets her half-empty water glass on the floor and stretches herself across the couch. His cue to join her, and he does, shifting into the scant space between her and the back of the couch. He slips his hand over her side, places it by habit higher than he would have in the old days. Closes his eyes, although he does not think sleep will come.

If she is the enemy, he thinks, she still knows him better than any of his friends.

———

He snaps out of a fitful sleep a few hours later, her hand shaking his shoulder, whispering. "It's time to get moving."

The cabinet doors are open, he sees as he stands — grogginess quickly replaced by a rolling boil in his stomach — and there are two backpacks on the floor beside them. New and more obviously American models than they need to be, because now — _finally_ — they will go tourist. A national park near their objective, Watkins explains, and best to play lost Americans if anyone asks. A ploy he knows has worked for Sydney, farther east, outside Arkhangel'sk. _ Sydney and Noah._ That reminder restarts the scrutiny in his mind.

Watkins returns to packing her backpack. He will carry the explosives, her a notebook computer and several black boxes designed for data transfer. Tranquilizer guns and deadlier alternatives for both, although he would prefer to stick to the former.

"No silencers, and no vests," she says, calmly slamming a clip into her Glock.

"I thought these places were supposed to be stocked with everything."

"The operative words there being 'supposed to,' Michael," she says. "We're pretty well fucked if we hit a situation where we need them anyway."

She walks into the kitchen, returns with half a loaf of black bread in a plain plastic bag. "Take it. We've got a half-hour drive. You can eat then."

He checks the contents of his backpack one more time, and follows her out the door. Down a narrow wooden staircase and out the front of the apartment building. He nearly loses her as she ducks down an alley, toward the small parking lot behind the place.

They leave the spires in the old blue Mercedes parked there, her profile strong against the twilight in the car window. She has closed him off now, stone-faced and focused, eyes on the road. She could be completely calm, or she could be petrified, he thinks, and he would not know the difference.

———

The rendezvous point is a tiny clearing amidst the thick forest, and they reach it first. Almost two hours early, and the correct clearing, according to the GPS device in Vaughn's hand.

Watkins wastes no time in sitting, back against a tree trunk. She shows no pain, but he knows it must be there — has to be there, because she is not so far from the cane that it can be absent after that hike. Even Vaughn feels it, too many recent hours crammed into tiny airplane seats, and he sits beside her. Rests his head against the bumps of the bark and waits.

He should ask her how she feels, he thinks. He selects another question, instead, the one that claimed his mind during the hike here. One of the few he thinks he should have left.

She yanks at the zipper of her backpack, pulls out a bottle of water. He waits through two long draws on it before speaking.

"Chris, I need to know. How much of your last operation do you really remember?"

It is almost completely dark, half-moon barely reaching them through the trees, and she is facing away from him, staring across the clearing, but he can sense the glare on her face. "You had to do this now. You couldn't have waited, or done it when you damn well should have." But then she takes another sip from the bottle and answers. "Everything I know is in my report, Michael. I never lied about that."

"I've never seen you not be able to remember something, Chris." _Mind like a sponge. Sleep with people, soak up the intel in their briefcases. Rambaldi manuscripts. Missile plans. Software code. Never forget._

Her eyes must be cool little blue slits now, he thinks. "You've never seen me short a couple pints of blood." 

"Don't you wonder? Doesn't it bother you, not knowing?"

"You think it doesn't? I try — all the time, I try — to bring it back. Thought about it until it hurt, went to Barnett. It isn't there, Michael." She pauses. "You should know — I gave Robertson the wrong start time, for today. I told him one a.m."

"So you don't trust him?"

"I don't know whether I should trust him. I'd rather overcompensate."

He realizes now that no amount of questioning will ever fully ease the doubt. That there is no magic response that can make him trust her fully.

And then his thoughts are interrupted with rustling leaves and snapping branches, ending the brief silence. Presumably more of the team, but they both stand, guns drawn, prepared for other possibilities.

It is only Weiss and McClure, looking marginally fresher, he thinks, than himself and Watkins. Nothing much to say here — "good evening" seems dreadfully out of place for the middle of a forest in Russia, and what they intend to do in just over an hour. 

"Hey. Any trouble getting here?" he says quietly, which doesn't seem much less out of place. But he can feel a new tension here, with their arrival, and wonders if Weiss is having second thoughts.

"Piece of cake." McClure answers instead. "You two all set?"

"Yeah." Vaughn nods and sets to searching his backpack. It takes him a few minutes in the dim light, but eventually he finds his earpiece and microphone, amazingly tiny things, he thinks, setting them into place. He taps his ear and speaks when the static clears. "Vaughn here."

"Hello, Vaughn." Kretchmer. A bit of a surprise this early; usually one of the nameless techies checks the comm links. "You're a little ahead of schedule."

"So are you. We're still waiting on Bristow and Dixon. I'll make contact again when they get here."

"Copy that," he says, and they lapse into silence.

The arrival of Sydney and Dixon is much stealthier, announced five minutes later when Watkins stands and levels her gun between two thick tree trunks, backing it off when they emerge. She must have been focused on all the nuances of the quiet forest, he thinks, because he did not hear them until after she stood.

"Hello," Watkins says, low-volume and blunt.

"Hi." Short and equally quiet from Sydney. Watkins's back is to him and Sydney is too far away for him to get a clear look at her expression, but he is certain both are glaring. Watkins takes a step backward and reclaims her seat against the tree, next to him.

Vaughn turns his earpiece back on. "We're all here now."

"I guess everybody wants to get this over with," Kretchmer says. "You're clear on sats if you want to go early."

He looks up, gauging the rest of them. "Kretchmer says we're clear overhead if we want to go early."

They snap to attention with this, and he wonders how many of them feel the same twitching nervousness that exists deep within him. Maybe not Sydney and Dixon, even Watkins — too many missions, too much experience, he thinks. Even so, this is not the way it should be done. Not the people who should be doing it.

"If it's clear now, we should go while we have the chance," Watkins says, and he recalls her earlier words. _I gave Robertson the wrong start time. _ Wonders just how much she fears that this operation will go the way of her last.

An eager "let's do it" from McClure. Silent, grudging nods from Sydney, Dixon and Weiss. More hands ripping at the zippers of bright new backpacks. Vaughn gives everyone one last chance to disagree, but the group remains silent. He takes a deep breath and speaks again.

"We want to go now."

———

She moves well beside him, flowing through the forest, even up the steep hill that immediately prefaces their target. They crouch against it, hands ready on the tranq guns.

"North team?"

"Copy." Sydney sounds particularly blunt, he thinks.

"Perimeter?"

"Copy. Everything looks clear." Weiss is equally blunt, but at least he is speaking. _And they're not exactly your best pals right about now._

"Then let's move." He looks to Watkins, who counts with her fingers, but he is drawn to her eyes. A slight glint off the blue from the exterior lights of the building, focus unbelievably sharp. _One. Two. Three._

Go. 

She swings up over the hill first, a quick, silent check of the area before they move the small distance to a door they have never actually seen — only calculated, estimated, assumed. But it is there, tan metal like the rest of the building, large and looming. Quick, quiet, and smooth in their movements, and he recalls that they have done this before. Many years ago, and only the preliminary training course at Langley, but they were good together then.

And now. Too uneventful, he thinks — there should be guards, tree roots to trip over. Something. But when they reach the door, there is still nothing. She glances at the small plastic box and the electronic keycard slot that tops it, then fumbles through the pockets of her pants. Pulls out an appropriate card, swipes and red lights turn green. Vaughn reaches for the doorknob, turns it, and —

Finally something: three shocked guards. No video surveillance outside, then. She is fast — another thing he knows from their training days — and hits two guards to his one. _Damn good, Chris._

"East team is in. North team, status?" A long pause, and he uses it to examine the hallway they have entered. It appears to extend the length of the building, which they have assumed is large enough to hold their objective and not much else. Three doors, likely more guards behind them. _And hopefully what we came here for._

"We're in," Sydney says, a little more breathless than him.

"We're in a large hallway. Do you think you're anywhere near that?"

"No. Just a set of stairs, heading down now." Underground is a possibility they have considered, but had no way to confirm. Perhaps it is down there.

"Copy that. We've got three doors up here. Checking those now."

Watkins is already moving to the first door, although she waits for him before opening it. Perfect technique together, as they sweep in, scan, and discover it is small and empty. The second is similarly small, but populated. A young man types at a computer terminal until Watkins hits him with a dart; he slumps over, forehead narrowly missing the keyboard.

"We should try to get back here," she says, pointing to the machine. "Search that."

"Where are we at, people?" Kretchmer, calm but a little impatient.

"East team has nothing so far." They back out of the room, sprinting down the hallway to the room that should hold the model. Something, he thinks, needs to account for the size of the building, and the first two rooms have not even been close.

"Nothing from north team, either."

Vaughn finds his stomach jumps as he wraps his hand around the final doorknob. _This is it. This must be it. This all has to be for something._ Then he turns it, swings it open rapidly, and finds —

It is empty. Large enough, to be sure, but completely empty.

"Well, shit." This from Watkins, who takes the place in — a bit bewildered, as is he. Clean white walls, smooth concrete floor, and it looks as if it has been empty for quite awhile. Perhaps always. A big empty, echoing cavern of failure, he thinks, following Watkins back to the second room.

"North team, no model. We're going to search a computer here, but that's all we've got. How copy?"

"Last room, Vaughn, but this is the only one that's been protected." Another keycard box, he assumes, or something similar. "We're working on getting in."

He helps Watkins pull the unconscious man from the chair in front of the computer, then has nothing to do but watch. That, he decides, is not productive, so he moves to the doorway, checks the hallway again. _There should be more guards. There should be some kind of backup. Unless Syd and Dixon hit most of their manpower. _

"Perimeter, are we still clear?"

"Crystal." McClure this time, voice holding a bit of disappointment.

"You're clear on sats," Kretchmer says. "But it's starting to cloud up. I may lose you soon."

Watkins's fingers fly at the keyboard — Cyrillic again — and she is right, they did need her, he thinks. "I'm in," she says, after a few minutes, reaching into her backpack to pull out one of the black devices. It goes onto the top of the unit, and she turns to him.

"It's a list of places. Coordinates, for cities, I'm assuming. I'll pull as many the files as we've got time for."

"Okay." He glances out into the hallway again. _Still clear._ "Syd, how's it going?"

"We're in." Breathless again, so perhaps they are taking the brunt of this. "There's a crate in the middle of the room, Vaughn. About three feet by four feet. Nothing else." _No model here, then. So we were wrong. _Sydney is quiet now, he thinks, so they must have disabled all of their obstacles. He can hear her step around the room.

"There's writing on the side, Vaughn. Russian." A pause now, and he knows it will take her a moment to decipher the writing — her skill with the language mainly spoken, enough to talk her way through missions, but not much else. "Krasnyj Ballon."

Watkins turns to him, and the focus in her eyes has fled. Replaced with shock, maybe even fear. She translates, but it is unnecessary, the words simple enough even for his limited command of the language.

"Red Balloon."

———

Kretchmer speaks first, when they finally return to speaking. "Bristow, I want you to get that crate open and give me a confirmation on what's inside. I'm going to get backup on the way now."

"What if it arms?" Sydney asks. Vaughn finds he is thinking the same thing, remembering the same event — Sydney, sitting on a ticking nuke in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania.

"I'll have someone here in about 30 seconds to help you with that," Kretchmer says. "Just get the damned thing open."

Then silence again, save for Sydney and Dixon grunting, the faint creaking of wood. And finally, a louder clanking, which Vaughn assumes must be the sides of the crate hitting the floor.

"What the — " Not the words any of them wanted to hear from Sydney, nor the agonizing pause before she speaks again. "It's not a bomb, Vaughn. It's a smaller Circumference model, like the one I took in Taipei, the first time." He refrains from snapping back to her second trip to Taipei. "But Vaughn, the ball in the center — it's not the polymer. It's not red."

"Then what the hell is it?"

She does not say at first. Leaves them with another painful pause. _Fucking spit it out, Sydney._

"I think it's plutonium."


	15. 2x5: The Answer

Chapter 2.5 — The Answer

There is no pause this time, just Kretchmer, rapid-fire. 

"Perimeter, I want you two to get over there and help east team get that thing the hell out of there. And I've lost you on sats. Looks like a big front moving in, 80-90 percent cloud cover. We've got a chopper in the air, but it's going to take us awhile to get to you."

"Copy that," Sydney says. "Packing it up now."

Vaughn and Watkins are already halfway to the door of the tiny room, the black box secured in her backpack, when he speaks again. 

"North team, you stay put."

"Sir — " Vaughn wonders briefly why he's using the term at a time like this " — shouldn't we go help them as well?"

"No. I want those coordinates."

In case none of you make it out. In case you fail. I want those coordinates so we'll know where to start looking.

"Watkins?"

"Just a sec. Let me get back to the top of the list." She steps gingerly over the body on the floor and reclaims the seat in front of the computer. Fingers rattle through the keys again, and a new sound joins the clicking — meshing with it, almost in unison, but louder.

It takes Vaughn a moment to realize the new sound is gunfire. Somewhere outside the tiny room, the forest, he thinks. "What the hell is going on out there?"

There is no answer over the radio, only Watkins, swift and loud. "40, 58, 14 north. 88, 45, 55 west. 47, 52, 00 north. 99, 39, 00 west. 37, 11, 35 north. 93, 11, 57 west — "

" — we're under fire!" Weiss, finally. "McClure is down — "

" — 31, 30, 45 north — "

" — dead." _Shit. Damn it. Stupid, fucking eager kid. Dead._ Something, some deep boiling dread, compels him to check his watch. Thirty-three seconds past midnight.

"92, three, 57 west. 41, 47, 53 north. 98, 50, 33 west — "

_We should go while we have the chance. I gave Robertson the wrong start time._

" — Weiss, do you copy?" Kretchmer is slightly less calm, Vaughn thinks. "Weiss?" No answer. _oh god he's dead and it was all compromised. Again._

"East team, stay put until we get a better idea of what's happening out there."

"Copy that."

" — 34, three, seven north — " One of Watkins's hands drifts down to her backpack, whizzes through the zipper, roots around " — 118, 14, 34 west. Fuck, that's L.A."

Shots still chatter from somewhere outside. _They killed them, and now they're going to come in and kill you. _Watkins slowly extracts her gun — the real one — from the backpack. For a second, he thinks —

oh god. Chris, not you. Not you. It can't be you.

— she will swing it up at him. Point it at him, bore into him with the ice eyes one last time, and pull the trigger. _Kill you like that damned eager kid. Kill you like Weiss. Kill you like the rest of her team. Drill you like Irina Derevko would._

She doesn't. "38, 53, 52 north. 77, two, 12 west — " The gun goes next to the keyboard, clunks down there, reminds him that it is past time to switch.

Not you, Chris. Never you. Relief washes over him like the numbers she continues to recite, but he cannot ignore the time or the noises outside.

Never Chris, but someone. Someone blew her op again. The Circumference is Red Balloon and somehow everything ran together and collided and intertwined.

"Watkins, where are you?" Kretchmer interrupts his thoughts. "You two are gonna have to move, help out east team."

"Three more," she says, then launches into the remainder.

Obvious. Not obvious. The signature on her report. Shifted priorities. False leads. We think the nuke may have crossed over onto American soil. We just can't spare the manpower for a team right now. Someone with the authority to do it all, to reassign and shift and deny —

"Devlin. It was Devlin." No one confirms his statement, and he does not have time to braid his thoughts together into something coherent enough to support it.

Because they are there, in the doorway. Two men, black-clad, rifles first. "Prival!" 

Vaughn does not understand the word specifically, but the meaning is clear enough. Halt, stop, or we'll shoot you like your friends and _this is all going to end badly_. He is closer to the doorway, not close enough — not fast enough — to do anything but slowly lean over and place his gun on the concrete floor. A clunk, and it sounds hollow. He holds his hands out, wide, the universal sign for surrender, and slowly begins to rise.

He sneaks a glance back to her, barely visible in the periphery, but he knows, almost instinctively, her intentions. The hands sliding slowly from the keyboard, one in a direction it shouldn't and —

No. Chris, no.

Fast. Always fast. Her eyes on the men in the doorway, as if her hand has its own agenda. Slipping slowly and then — _point of no return_ — snapping, flying, grasping. Wrist flicking — up, up, up — gun jerking in her hand as one man's forehead erupts in a burst of red. A second jerk, quickly to the left, and a second burst.

Loud, he realizes, when it is done. _No silencers._ And so the shots ring through his ears in the tiny room. Two men on the floor by the doorway, and for a second, he thinks she is fast enough.

Not fast enough. Not for that. She gasps, slumps a little in the chair, but not enough to hide the red blooming high on her stomach. Higher than the pink line. Closer to the center. _No vests, either._

He becomes aware of many things now. Kretchmer, in his ear: "North team! North team! Do you copy?" Stumbling toward her. Some strangled reply that she's been hit but she's still alive. _Still alive._ Her blood, slick on his hand as he presses it into her. Calling her name, again and again, and the pools of blood forming around the men on the floor. _Still alive._ Computer whirring next to her, competing somehow with her labored breaths.

Promising her that they will make it out of here, that they will get her help. That she will be okay. _Still alive._ The fear and shock mingling in her eyes, dark and pained on the blue. Kretchmer screaming in his ear that east team needs his help. His free hand, speckled with blood, as he turns the earpiece off.

She makes a choking noise as he moves his other hand away from the wound, starts to pick her up.

"What the — " another cough " — what the hell are you doing?"

"Getting you out of here, Chris."

He watches her push the fear-shock from her eyes and replace it with something deeper. Darker.

"Are you insane?" Not the reaction he had anticipated. "You _have to go_ help. Go help them with the device."

"Chris, I'm not going to leave you here." Desperation rings in his voice, and it doesn't sound like him. Doesn't feel like this is real.

"You have to, Michael. This — _this_ is the big picture. You have to go." She stares at him, as if the force of her eyes will be enough. "_Go_. Just fucking go."

The logic, then. Another decision in which he does not have a say, and somewhere in the core of him he feels she is right, but does not want her to be. Everything is stiff, disjointed — _unreal_ — as he stands. 

"I'm going to come back for you." His hand stabs around his ear until the receiver returns to Kretchmer's yelling. "This is Vaughn. I'm on my way."

He leaves her with her hand clutching the center of the crimson on her stomach.

———

Night cooler, air more blustery as he swings out of the metal door, half expecting an ambush.

Nothing, again, and even the gunfire has died.

"Chris?"

"I'm still here." A tired sarcasm, something fading from her voice, he thinks. "Fucking focus, Michael — " Another cough, _and just hang on, Chris._ " — I'm going radio silent."

Static for a second, and when it clears there is no longer the sound of her. No more faint, labored breathing. No occasional cough. Nothing to fuel hope.

Silence beneath his feet as he works quickly toward the corner of the building. Hugging it, staying close, where there are only patches of grass on dirt. No twigs, branches, rocks to snap or scatter. Nothing to give him away, step step step, gun low but ready.

The corner, then. And his name, from somewhere in the trees behind him. Soft, very soft, something for disbelief, but definitely _there_.

And then again. "Mike."

Weiss. Quickly over the crest of the hill, running and up against the side of the building, along the tufts of grass until he is behind Vaughn. And very much alive.

"Eric?" A quick whisper. "I thought you were — "

No easy way to put that. Especially with what he has left behind.

"My microphone went out."

Vaughn does not bother with "I'm glad." No ill-sounding, inadequate, time-consuming pleasantries here. Another swift whisper. "Weiss is with me, north side of the building. Going around to the east now."

He moves with this, gun swinging around first, its momentum carrying the rest of him.

Enemy. Shoot. Enemy. Shoot. Some sort of instinct, reflex on his trigger finger until they are falling in front of him. Three, four, five, he is not sure, but then there are no more. No more black-clad men, no more rifles, no more yellow starbursts in the night and no more bullets flying in his direction, clanging into the metal building. A cursory check finds none of them hit their intended targets.

"East side is clear, for now," he says, still quiet, and he realizes he has not heard anything from Sydney or Dixon in quite awhile. Quick toward the east door, but it swings open before they reach it, and they halt. Tense, guns-up waiting, until the door claps against the metal siding and Sydney steps out — walking backward, feet cautious. In her hands, two corners of a clear — plastic, plexiglass perhaps — box. Dixon grasps the other two corners, steps just as careful. 

This is the first time Vaughn has actually seen such a device, and he takes a moment to study it. Small, but somehow still foreboding, a silver ball suspended over a black curve. _The big picture._

"We're ready to extract the device," Vaughn says, eyes scanning the forest around them. Hoping there will be no movement amongst the trees, no men swinging around the corner with more firepower than they can handle. "Where's our chopper?"

"Two minutes," Kretchmer says. "Can you hang on that long?"

"We don't have much of a choice, do we?" _Nothing in the woods. Nothing around the corner. Please stay nothing, because we can't handle any more._

"You're going to have to move around, Vaughn. To the access road. Only place they'll be able to land, and even that's going to be tight."

Access road. South side. Another fucking corner.

"We should — you should let me and Weiss carry the device. You're both more experienced, better shots." _Pragmatic. Logical. Like her. The only thing that matters is getting the damned thing out._

Vaughn swaps with Sydney, fingers wrapping gingerly around each corner. He catches her, staring first at the blood on his hands, then trying to reach his eyes, but he focuses on the box in front of him and the device inside.

The helicopter is whirring in the distance when they reach the corner. _So close. So damn close and then at least this will all be for something._ Vaughn tightens his grip on the box as Sydney and Dixon swing around the corner. 

Shots — _one two three four five six seven eight nine_ — and then Dixon. "Clear!"

Careful, oh so careful, and he curses every tuft of grass, every rock under his feet as they creep around the corner. The whirring grows louder, turns to thumping — closer and descending. They walk, slow, Sydney and Dixon on either side of the box, until they reach the road. 

Box on the grass now, the blades whipping trees around them into a frenzy, adding to the harsh wind that arrived with the clouds overhead. Down, down, down, and they are going to do it, he decides. Helps to pick up the box, all four of them now, eight hands on it, bodies crouched to avoid the stirring of the blades. 

Surreal, when they push it into the back seat. Sitting there, taking up most of the space in the tiny thing, and then there is a realization — only room for one, and no time to retrieve the one he wants there. His hand on Dixon's shoulder, then, Sydney and Weiss nodding in agreement. _No widows. No fatherless children._ And no time to protest. Dixon climbs in and starts securing the device as the helicopter pulls away from the ground.

Maybe this is the big picture, he thinks as it clears the trees. _So much more than something._

———

Sydney speaks first, and forcefully. "We need to change the rendezvous point. If this was all compromised, that may have been as well."

"You remember that little cabin, about a half mile away?" They nod. "We can meet there. But Chris — I have to go back. I have to go back for her first." He doesn't wait for an answer, spins instead and starts running.

"Vaughn!" _You would do it too, Syd, and you know it._

Then the static again, and it is a wonderful noise, he thinks, because it means she is conscious and _with it _enough to turn her comm link back on. "Did you get it out?" Quiet, fading, but still there and _it's not too late_.

"Yes, Chris, we did. Listen, I'm on my way and — "

" — Michael, I want you to listen to me. Don't do it. Don't come back. Just go. Get the hell out of here." She pauses, coughs again, and he thinks — perhaps, maybe, _oh god no_ — voices. And then static, again.

"Chris? Damn it, Chris!"

He runs faster now, almost blind, skidding to a halt at the first corner. Around it — clear — and he ignores Sydney, screaming into his ear. Calling him a fool, pleading with him to run. _I can't, Sydney. I can't._

Next corner — swing, look, point — and one man standing there. He fires, twice, and somehow still has some semblance of aim left. The black-clad figure crumples to the ground, rifle spurting into the sky on impact.

At the door now, and his hands are still crusted with blood, shaking as he searches pockets for the right keycard. Rattling it through the groove on the plastic box when he finally — _finally!_ — finds the right one, and then there is the green light, and his hand on the knob.

He flings it open — doesn't have a plan of attack, doesn't have a clue what is beyond, except for her. _It can't end here. It can't end this way._

Nothing, hallway clear, and he thinks he could not have handled another shot. Wants only to get to her. Wants only the answer.

The door to the second room is open; he left it open, thinks now that perhaps that was a bad idea. Quickly, quickly, quickly to the door, and there are footprints in the blood that are not his own. Dread takes his stomach now — tight, pulsating, blood swirling up to his ears, roaring. And somewhere deep in the center of all this, he knows the answer even before he turns the last corner. But he has to see, has to know, slowly around, and —

There is a second bullet wound, in the center of her forehead. Eyes clearer, in death, and he realizes it is because there is no emotion, no fire — _no Chris, oh god nothing_ — behind them. 

And now it all flashes through his mind —

The men swooping in, guns pointed at her. Chris, forcing the fight — gun up and whatever she had left, shooting until one of them hit her. Trying to hold out for him and knowing she couldn't, or —

It's just pain. Either you live or die, and either way it's over eventually.

A logic beyond that. 

Scopolamine. Sodium Amytal. Sodium Pentothal. Her battered body, partially healed and then beaten again to a bloody pulp. A dark faceless figure, breaking things, pulling things. And when that didn't work, drugs pumped into her disfigured form until whatever was left loosened its tongue.

Years of intelligence, categorized and cataloged by that sharp mind, spilling from her. Missile plans. Software. SD-6.

Surrounded by black-clad men and all of these things, blue eyes terrified as she picks up the gun, moves to point it at them. Turns it on herself and makes it intellectual, logical, moves her finger until —

Either way, it solidifies things. This is the moment when he trusts her completely.

———

Voices down the hallway — _must have been in the big room_ — and he cannot stand to be in the small one with her — _her and the dead eyes and all this blood_ — any longer. And then he is spinning and running, out of the room, into the hallway — "Prival! Prival!" — and there are gunshots and bullets, but he does not stop until he is out of the building, into the forest and slipping, tumbling down the hill.

There, at the bottom, he lies for a moment. Wants to make some noise, express something, but there is nothing. Nothing appropriate for what he has seen. Nothing to reach the shock that makes him tremble at his core.

———

It takes him an hour to get to the safehouse. Running through the forest, branches snapping at him, ripping at his face, reaching up to pull them away and her blood is still there. Trying to get _icy cold dead blue_ out of his mind, but it is there and it won't go away. Won't ever go away.

Someone shouting his name over the radio, but he gives no answer. There is no answer for this, no words to communicate the images in his mind and the way he found her. He leaves the microphone on and gives the voice the twigs breaking under his feet, wind whipping around him. No mournful noises, no sobs, although there are tears. He reaches up, tries to wipe at these, and they mix with her blood. Make it wet again.

Cold black peat and dead leaves on the ground under his palms, and some force, compelling him to stand back up and keep running. 

He curses the sky because there is all this storm around him and no rain, and _why can't it rain and wash all of this away?_ Rinse off the blood and the images and leave him cold and numb and nothing.

It's just pain. Either you live or die, and either way it's over eventually.

The cabin is surreal, a tiny little thing crammed within the thick forest. Battered and rotting and run-down, but there and he has found it somehow. Somehow with the little green-light square of global positioning in his hand, caked in mud but it says this is it. He decides he doesn't care if somehow it isn't.

No knob, but the door is a few inches off the frame, enough to wrap his fingers around, and he is opening it, stumbling inside. Hoping someone is there, because it is time to give up. Weiss and Sydney, standing there, guns drawn until they recognize him. Or what is left of him.

Covered in dirt, blood, bits of dried leaves and twigs. Cold and way past shock, floating, no longer caring. He wants to be numb, but her eyes — her eyes and her blood — keep breaking through, stabbing back at him.

"Holy shit." This from Weiss, but he sounds far away, from some other place.

They catch him before he collapses, wrap him in a blanket. Some crocheted, garish thing of red and yellow and orange, absorbing the mess that is him. Leading him to a bucket of water, doing their best to wash him, scrub away the blood and the mud, but it is not enough.

Sydney's eyes look nothing like hers.

[— End Part II —]


	16. 3x1: Finish Line

[— Epilogue —]

Chapter 3.1 — Finish Line

Russia bluffs well.

During the years the rest of the world was racing to understand the mysteries of Milo Rambaldi, she sat quietly and minded the work of her predecessor. 

And so there was a winner long before there was a race. 

The Soviet Union began its study of Milo Rambaldi in 1982, and had a working model of his Circumference in 1985. Scientists spent two years studying it, analyzing it.

By 1987, they were ready to modify it. The project was Red Balloon, and the objective was to disrupt the balance of Mutual Assured Destruction. A fusion, if you will, of two geniuses of their time — Rambaldi and Einstein. 

In the years after the Soviet Union's demise, Red Balloon was shuttled amongst covert labs, eventually coming to rest below a bunker in Siberia.

Irina Derevko learned of its location shortly before her model — an interpretation of Rambaldi's plans that took the _bigger is better_ route — was destroyed. Left with nothing but the location of a poorly guarded bunker, Derevko took a shortcut and stole the weapon she had heard rumors of during her final years with the KGB.

———

CIA analysts have determined that the coordinates recovered from the site outside St. Petersburg were for American and Russian cities, large and small. They believe some of them were hiding places, others potential targets.

The Red Balloon device is currently under analysis at a National Security Agency laboratory. 

Diplomatic talks are strained, but ongoing, regarding its return to Russia. The Russians want it returned in full. It is much more likely that it will go back in pieces, a treaty preventing its reassembly.

Preliminary conjecture by NSA scientists has Red Balloon capable of something much worse than a mushroom cloud.

———

The three of them were good friends at one point. Only one still works for the United States. Another heads SD-6. The third sits in a small cell at Ft. Leavenworth and contemplates Irina Derevko.

He met her through her husband — his friend, Jack Bristow. Learned of her secret, her agenda, long before Bristow, the FBI and the CIA. 

By then, it was too late. By then, Bill Devlin thought she was the love of his life.

———

No bodies are recovered, but there is the pretense of caskets for Christine Watkins and Alexander McClure. Quiet, but surprisingly large, professional ceremonies among uniform rows of white gravestones.

Michael Vaughn is there, but he does not show emotion. 

Her body turns up in a St. Petersburg morgue, identified as Katia Petrova — an old alias — and she is buried as such. The small concrete slab over her grave bears that name, a false year of birth and a correct year of death. It contrasts the spires and grandeur towering over it. 

———

She half expects him to be waiting there for her. Solid, steady, unflappable Vaughn. Wearing his desk job suit, with the calm eyes that anchor her.

Of course, he is not. Weiss instead, looking grim under the fluorescent lights of the warehouse. Looking like he has just been through some unspeakable thing. She knows how he feels, and it pains her to think of Vaughn — the look of him as he stumbled into the cabin.

Sydney Bristow has experienced plenty of tragedy. And she has been at that point before, although Vaughn has not seen her there. By the time she met him, the pain had hardened into something black and angry inside her. But she knows the state. Looking numb, but feeling so much — _too much_ — more.

He did not speak as they cleaned him up, merely sat there dully as if he did not give a damn about anything — anything ever again — his eyes so murky they seemed more black than green. 

"She's dead." Clutching the dirty, bloody blanket around himself. She tries not to think of the desolation of those words as she slides open the fence gate and walks up to Weiss.

"Hey," she says. "How's Vaughn?" And knows the answer isn't good, even before he shakes his head.

"He's taking some time off, but he said you can call if you need him."

But who does he need, Weiss? Who does he need?

———

He writes. Sits on his couch with a yellow legal pad and blue ballpoint pen and maps out scenarios. 

Ways he could have saved her and still extracted the device. Reasons he should have realized Devlin was a mole. Things she said that should have made him realize she was trustworthy. Opportunities he had to kiss her in the safehouse.

The end result is always the same. A billion what-ifs branching out in every direction, and only one path leading through them to the now.

He goes through five legal pads in the first week.

———

In a tiny bar in the middle of the Los Angeles sprawl, an over-dressed, suited man walks in. An young kid on the stage today, perhaps some talent there. The song an old, familiar thing.

The Thrill is Gone.

He walks up to the bar, wishes he could blend. Vodka. Rocks. He detests the stuff, but this is not about him. The vodka does what it is supposed to, so he orders another, and another. And understands her now.

All of my friends are dead.


	17. 3x2: Soznanie

Chapter 3.2 — Soznanie

He takes time off. Time that is his, but not supposed to be taken. Months of comp days, vacation time, building up over the years because he is not supposed to use them. He is supposed to be dedicated to the job. It is understood at the Agency — unwritten rule — that the extra time is for the end of one's career. It accelerates retirement.

If you make it that far.

He doesn't care — adds it to the two weeks they give him for emotional duress. He is still required to come in and meet with Barnett twice a week. On Tuesdays, his appointment is right after Will Tippin's, and he thinks Will looks like he is improving. 

He briefly considers telling Barnett everything about his relationship with Christine Watkins. Explaining that this is a little bit more than coming back to find his dead partner during an overmatched operation that went wrong because his boss was working for the enemy. Explaining that there is too much to it to even begin to explain, and that is the center of the problem.

He thinks he could tell her everything and still keep his job. Something about saving the world.

That is not what he calls it. To him, it is always the big picture, and he sees her eyes — strong and alive, crystalline blue — as she says it.

He knows she existed, but her return from Russia sometimes feels like something his imagination conjured. Something to fill his nights with careful touches around the pain; mornings with a presence in the bed, occasionally a soft, lined smile. 

Something to end horribly, send him spiraling downward and wondering if there an end to all of this. If he wants to find it, somewhere amidst dead blue eyes and his empty bed.

———

She makes the call because Weiss thinks he is getting worse. She knows about this, knows that strange things happen when you start to reflect. Knows that time is not the great healer it's cracked up to be.

She has thought, occasionally, that he might want to talk to her. That he left the lines of communication open out of more than some lingering thread of duty to her. Then she remembers their last real conversation and thinks she is the last person he would want to talk to.

But Sydney Bristow has known plenty of loss, and she will put the offer out there. Hope it is enough.

It has been a long time since they've met at the pier. She used to think it was the water that bothered him. Now, perhaps, other things, different reasons — memories he wanted to avoid. The Pacific is calm today, sky sunny. Nothing like his face, unshaven for days, she thinks, and marked with the long, steady pain of loss.

His hair is still wet, and she assumes he showered before coming here. Wonders if he stood there in the hot water and hoped it would beat the ache out. Stepped out into a bathroom full of steam and realized the grief was still there. Glad the water was coating the mirror, condensing and dripping down, so he could not see his reflection. 

She is unsure of how to feel now. Part of her aches for him, the palpable hurt radiating from his features. Part of her feels guilt, for the jealousy and the mistrust and the words. Part of her sees Watkins's blood on his hands, Danny's blood in the bathtub — horrific, violent imagery of the sum of their losses flashing through her mind.

She wants the tornado of emotions to stop, so the debris can land and she can pick up a piece of something concrete. How to feel. What is appropriate. Because now she is grasping, and there is nothing within reach.

The setting is not very intimate, although she has made it so before, and all she can offer is "hi," several feet away from him. It feels like a much greater distance.

"Hey." Soft, like it hurts too much to conjure volume. "What did you need?" Technically, they ended their last conversation with things that should be discussed, referenced at least, but she gets the feeling he doesn't give a damn.

"I didn't need anything, Vaughn. I just wanted to say I'm sorry — " _Sorry for your loss, sorry for the things I said, but I didn't trust her. And obviously there was someone out there we shouldn't have trusted, just not her._ _And I'm so sorry for that._ " — and I wanted you to know that I'm here if you want to talk."

The words sounded much better when she planned them out in the morning, edited them on the drive here. Now that she has said them, they seem hollow, weak, wafting out away from them on the breeze that crosses the ocean.

———

If there is one thing Michael Vaughn and Sydney Bristow have in common, it is that they may never have the white picket fence.

Perhaps it is a moment of weakness, to let her off the hook. But she is offering comfort and understanding. And currently, he needs that more than anything. Currently, he is weak. No, not weak, he thinks. Tired. Exhausted from trying to try.

Out of the house with a new purpose today. Something besides meeting with Barnett, going to her bar, walking to the grocery store to buy milk and bread and whatever else his hand can knock off the shelf into the basket. And legal pads. Always more of those.

She would understand them. She could understand it all, he thinks. But he has to get it out first — pages and pages of yellow paper and all the things that swirl within him — find a filter for all this mass and sift out the things that might help him heal.

It could have been easier, he thinks. He wishes there was some condensed truth he could put out there, throw into the wind — something like _I loved her_. But it is not that simple, and he is fairly certain that the statement is not true. _You need trust for love_. But a different branch, a shifted path, and perhaps it could have been a possibility, that they could have —

"It's so complicated, I don't even know what to feel, Syd."

She looks like she understands. He still reserves part of the truth for only himself — the version of the story that includes exactly how she fits into all of this.

———

He begins burning the legal pads. Shouldn't have started them in the first place — half of the scrawl on them is classified, high-level stuff. So they go up in flames over the toilet, big flaky ashes falling into the water. Donovan watching, curious, from the doorway.

They meet again, an empty classroom at UCLA. He had class in here once, and perhaps she did too, or does currently. Scattered rows of old desks with expletives and declarations of love etched into them. This is where he tells her.

"I can't do this anymore," he says, although he has not done the _this_ he refers to in weeks. "I'm leaving the Agency, Sydney. I'm sorry."

Her eyes flash. "Vaughn, you can't. I — " 

You don't need me, Sydney. We both know that.

"I don't think you should walk away like this."

You haven't been there — not in a long time. Maybe not ever.

"Sydney, I don't think I can do my job properly. And that's dangerous. It's dangerous to you, dangerous to Dixon." It puts him in danger, too, but he has not figured out how to feel about that. "I'm not in any condition to be what you need me to be right now." _And maybe I never was._

Her hand slides across the etchings, feels warm on his. "Don't set it in stone yet, Vaughn. I didn't know Chris very well, and I'm sorry for that. But I don't think she would have wanted you to give up."

No, he thinks. _You didn't know her at all. But she knew me._

He tells her he'll take some time and think about it anyway.

———

He returns for people, but Sydney is only one of them. Not even, he realizes, the important one.

The old man on the beach in Normandy. Chris in the Moscow nightclub. Chris in the second tiny room. His father. Compared to them, he decides he has sacrificed nothing. _And everything._

Mostly, he returns because he has abandoned the legal pads. Shifted to sitting on the couch, thinking about the big picture and the job and the differences between them. He spins his mind through her question. _Did you get it out? Did you get it out? Did you get it out?_

Eventually, it becomes an answer.

He parks the black Miata outside the warehouse, walks in and feels out of practice. Odd, because so much of this is instinct and habit — checking for tails, scoping the place, flicking the switch for dim fluorescents — and so much has changed drastically.

She is not surprised to see him, knew already of his return, but smiles broadly, eyes shining. "Welcome back."

He smiles, nods. Studies her for a second.

Perhaps, he thinks, someday they will take down SD-6. Move out to the country together. Buy a little farmhouse with a white picket fence. Two point five children and Donovan as the requisite dog. The odds for this are not good.

You'll never have the white picket fence, Michael.

He used to think she was his last chance. 

But standards have changed, priorities shifted. And now he considers other possibilities.

[— End Epilogue —]


	18. Author Notes and Miscellany

Author Notes and Miscellany

General notes: 

Vera: trust.

Red Balloon and Christine Watkins come from the warped brain of Lara. Milo Rambaldi is all JJ's, as are most of the rest of the characters in this story. 

The interior spaces of the CIA's L.A. Headquarters are all fictional, unless I happen to be a lucky guesser. 

There is such thing as a cyrillic keyboard, and they're pretty trick-looking, if you ask me. 

General site credits: 

Dictionaries: http://area51.berkeley.edu/~dima/stuff/rus and http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/ht/Russian.html (thanks, Thorne!)

Generally useful: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html (CIA world factbook, Russia)

Names: http://www.pdom.com/russian_names.htm; http://www.kabalarians.com/male/russianm.htm; http://www.kabalarians.com/female/russianf.htm; http://www.census.gov./genealogy/names/dist.all.last; http://www.census.gov./genealogy/names/dist.female.first; http://www.census.gov./genealogy/names/dist.male.first.

Music credit: "Marrow," Ani DiFranco, is the overarching theme song for this fic.

Prologue — A Shift In Priorities: 

"99 Luftballoons" ("99 Red Balloons") was a hit for the German group Nena in 1984. It reached US #2 and UK #1.

The a-bomb dates are correct unless I fucked up in my research. I don't know specifically what agents are told during training. I would imagine that, you know, preventing global destruction is pretty high on the old priority list. The Central Intelligence Agency evolved from the World War II Office of Strategic Services in 1947.

The KGB did, basically, evolve into the FSB in 1991. I believe K-Directorate is an invention of JJ Abrams.

Music credit: "99 Luftballoons" ("99 Red Balloons"), Nena.

1.1 — Postcards and Paper Bags:

Music credit: "So What," Ani DiFranco; "Unconscious," Stereo MCs; "Blue Monday," New Order.

1.2 — Habit:

Disk latency is a real term dealing with the speed of a disk drive (i.e. your hard drive); the mainframe models are a quasi-bullshit plot device. Hee.

The CIA and/or NSA may or may not monitor vast amounts of electronic communications in this country, i.e. what newspapers have budgeted for upcoming editions. Look into "Echelon" if you're more interested. 

Clear and present danger is established court doctrine for restriction of First Amendment rights (1919 Supreme Court case _Schenk v. United States_) Prior restraint of newspaper publication of stories that have national security implications is referenced in _Near v. Minnesota_ (1931).

Music credit: "Out of Habit," Ani DiFranco.

1.3 — Reflections:

The time zones are right according to http://www.timeanddate.com.

According to http://www.volgograd.ru/eng/industry.htm, the top industries in Volgograd are: Machine-building (30%); Chemical and petrochemical industries (14%); Food processing (12%); Ferrous metallurgy (10%); Light manufacturing (10%). 

Slava: glory

Music credit: "Omaha," Counting Crows; "No Way Out of Here," David Gilmour.

1.4 — Overlap:

Post-it notes are a registered trademark of 3M.

Music credit: "Overlap," Ani DiFranco.

1.5 — Swallow:

Sodium Pentothal info from: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/04/26/torture.htm

Music credit: "Waiting for the Sun," Jayhawks; "Itch," Ani DiFranco; "Losing My Religion," Tori Amos.

1.6 — Things Left Buried:

Los Angeles details are from personal memory.

Liquor credit (heh): Skyy Vodka.

Music credit: "The Thrill Is Gone," BB King; "Pulse," Ani DiFranco; "California," John Mayall; "Man in the Long Black Coat," Bob Dylan; "E-Bow the Letter," REM; "Rose Rouge," St. Germain; "The Boxer," Simon and Garfunkel.

1.7. — Nostalgia Run:

Music credit: "Adam and Eve" and "Dilate," Ani DiFranco; "To Bring You My Love," PJ Harvey; "Because the Night," Patti Smith; "Walk This World," Heather Nova; "When It Comes To You," Dire Straits.

1.8 — Settling:

Music credit: None, believe it or not.

1.9 — Filters:

Music credit: None

2.1 — Perspective: 

Normandy locations from http://gofrance.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://normandy.eb.com and http://www.expedia.com 

Music credit: "Things Have Changed," Bob Dylan; "Things We Said Today," The Beatles; "Deep Dish" and "Fire Door," Ani DiFranco; "Simple Man," Lynard Skynard.

2.2 — To Belong:

Music credit: None.

2.3 — Trust in Transition:

Music credit: "Pretending," Eric Clapton; "Tusk," Fleetwood Mac; "Bed of Lies," Matchbox 20; "Heart-Shaped Box," Nirvana; "Arabian Dance," Tchaikovsky.

2.4 — Skeleton:

St. Petersburg details from: http://www.fsl.orst.edu/larse/russia (forest); http://smisdata.iki.rssi.ru/noaa-cgi/stat_reg.pl?db=noaa®ion;=st_peter (satellite imagery); http://www.megaholiday.com/saintpetersburg (pictures); http://e274.w3.ton.tut.fi/saint_peterburg/metro-pic.html (metro system); http://www.kommet.spb.ru/english/station/index.html (metro system); http://www.tourinternational.com/gallery/preview/piter.html (pictures); http://www.infoservices.com/stpete/index.html (traveler's yellow pages); http://home.comset.net/freshspb/guide.html (a very kick-ass, informative and useful guide that helped me hugely).

Music credit: "Life During Wartime," Talking Heads; "Not a Pretty Girl" and "Shameless," Ani DiFranco; "DSMO," "Fearless" and "Electronaut," VNV Nation; "Come As You Are," Nirvana.

2.5 — The Answer:

Music credit: "Main Title," Last of the Mohicans; "Unforgiven," Metallica; "I'm The Ocean" and "Fallen Angel," Neil Young; "Exit," U2; "Standing (Motion)," "Epicentre" and "Forsaken," VNV Nation.

Epilogue I — Finish Line:

Um, I took physics in high school, but I really know nothing about Rambaldi devices or atomic bombs.

Music credit: "Going Down," Ani DiFranco; "Alone," Heart; "Bad," U2.

Epilogue II — Soznanie:

Soznanie: consciousness/realization

Music credit: "Crystal," Fleetwood Mac; "Theme," True Romance; "A Whiter Shade of Pale," Procol Harum; "Half the Man I Used To Be," Stone Temple Pilots; "Let It Be," The Beatles; "One," U2.


End file.
